F1: Lewis Hamilton takes pole in Bahrain; Ferrari strong in qualifying
Ryan Joseph Ramos April 18, 2015At the qualifying session for the 2015 Bahrain Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton was able to achieve another pole position while fending off the Ferrari drivers as well as his own Mercedes teammate. Hamilton posted 1:32.571 in Q3 to beat out Sebastian Vettel, who had a time of 1:32.982 for P2.
Hamilton’s teammate Nico Rosberg (Q3 1:33.129) will start in the second row at P3 ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen (1:33.227). The third row is all Williams, with Valtteri Bottas in P5 and Felipe Massa in P6.
Rosberg says he knew what he did wrong, which was thinking too far ahead on to the race by trying to save his tyres. “I took it easy in Q2 to save the race tyres, so I lacked the rhythm for Q3,” said the German driver. “Being third is not ideal.”
The provisional grid up to row 5 ,after Massa, is as follows: P7 Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo; P8 Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg; P9 Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz; P10 Lotus’s Romain Grosjean. McLaren’s Jenson Button will be at the back of the grid after his car suffered a third (yep, it’s bad) failure so far in Bahrain.
The pole is Hamilton’s fourth out of the first four races in the 2015 Formula One season. Even with the Ferraris disrupting the regular one-two we’ve come to see from Mercedes, the red cars just aren’t there yet, as evidenced by the per-lap pace comparisons. Hamilton will look to capitalize on this pole position and try to blitz out to an early lead in tomorrow’s race, looking to get his third race win.
