Hamilton beats Vettel in thrilling Hungary qualifying

By on Saturday, July 27, 2013
Mercedes AMG Petronas

Mercedes AMG Petronas

Lewis Hamilton secured his third successive pole position with a stunning late lap to deny Sebastian Vettel top spot at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Vettel was eighth tenths faster than his rivals after the first set of laps in Q3 but Hamilton eclipsed his rival by less than a tenth of a second.

"I was really surprised, I was expecting Sebastian to get it, it didn't even feel that great a lap," said Hamilton.

"I was pretty happy with my lap but it just wasn't good enough today," added Vettel. "You just have to be fair and respect [they] did better. But it puts us in a great place for the race. I'm quite confident."

Lotus's Romain Grosjean will start from third place. "My last lap was a pretty good lap but those guys were really quick," he said. "We will see what we can do and what we can get as a best result."

Nico Rosberg will start fourth, ahead of Fernando Alonso, with Kimi Raikkonen in sixth and Felipe Massa seventh.

Daniel Ricciardo made it through to Q3 for the fourth successive race and he will start from eighth place on the grid.

McLaren's Sergio Perez bounced back from a crash in final practice to progress through to Q3. The Mexican set the ninth fastest time on the prime tyres.

Mark Webber rounds out the top 10 after a KERS failure affected him in Q2. He did not set a lap in the final shootout.

"KERS, gearbox, you name it... driving the car round so far off is painful. It's massively frustrating and embarrassing," he said. "It's a pain in the arse. We should be challenging for pole and we're bloody P10. Two race weekends in a row."

Adrian Sutil, celebrating his 100th race, narrowly missed out on a berth in the top 10 and will start from eleventh, ahead of Nico Hulkenberg and Jenson Button.

Button blamed understeer for his early exit from qualifying.

Jean-Eric Vergne was unable to match team-mate Ricciardo and ended up fourteenth, while Williams failed to show sufficient progress and finished fifteenth and sixteenth, with Pastor Maldonado ahead of Valtteri Bottas.

Esteban Gutierrez was unable to progress through Q1; the Mexican missed final practice and ended up in seventeenth place.

Paul di Resta was another early casualty; the Force India driver was puzzled at his lack of pace and urged his team to improve.

At the back, Caterham got the better of Marussia as Charles Pic beat Giedo van der Garde, Jules Bianchi and Max Chilton.


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