Lewis Hamilton qualifies fastest for Hungarian Grand Prix, Daniel Ricciardo

If Hamilton wins today, and in two of the next three races, the world champion will equal Ayrton Senna’s achievement of 41 victories from 161 starts.

Four-time champion German Sebastain Vettel of Ferrari was third fastest ahead of Australian Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull and Finn Kimi Raikkonen, fifth in the second Ferrari. This is his ninth pole of the season as he vies for his fifth Budapest win in the main race tomorrow. The 30-year-old has nine more races to beat Vettel’s tally. He knew this was a blistering lap. But then, as early as the first lap in Q1, I had to feed back to the pits that I had heavy understeer from the vehicle.

“I’ve always had really good experiences here”.

“I don’t think this is a Williams track”, said Damon Hill.

“Just didn’t find the pace, it’s been a bit up and down all weekend for some unexplained reasons”, Rosberg said. I need to look into it tonight.

“On a day like this, with that kind of gap on your team-mate, you definitely have a good feeling”, he said.

Temperatures reaches a sweltering 35 degrees Celsius as Mercedes once again proved too hot to handle for their rivals.

“There’s something wrong with the balance”, he complained.

Alonso’s McLaren failed again, making this the first time McLaren has missed a auto in the top ten in Hungary. A surprise because this is not a circuit where engine power is at a premium, with only one long straight of note. Everyone in the team has done a fantastic job over the last 24 hours to understand and solve the suspension issues we experienced yesterday and put the necessary solutions in place.

Eager to get his auto out of the way, Alonso quickly jumped out and started to push the vehicle uphill on his own before a handful of track marshals helped him out.

The conditions in Hungary were testing, with Hamilton losing over half a kilo in weight during the session.

Hungarian Grand Prix – Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg says that the team may have been capable of achieving Q3 if their Friday preparation hadn’t been curtailed.

The British driver said on Friday that he thought Mercedes was looking strong in comparison to the rest of the field, and he will be hoping to underpin this in the final free practice session on Saturday morning.

The Hungarian GP transports Hamilton, among the purest drivers on the grid, back to the simpler time of his karting days, when each corner would flow into the next, racing would arouse the senses and the act of racing was done, above all else, for the fun of it. He improved, but still faded towards the end of the lap. Meanwhile, Hamilton manage to go faster and jumped into P1, Vettel was in P3 leading Ricciardo, Raikkonen, Bottas, Kvyat, Massa, Verstappen and Grosjean.