The start of the qualifying was delayed twice by ten minutes, as against all odds there was raining heavily at Hungaroring! Finally everyone went out on Pirelli´s wet tyres, as there remained a chance of rain within another five minutes. And very soon it was pouring with heavy rain! Both Mercedes drivers and Kimi in his SF16-H had been unable to set a competitive lap time, as the red flags came out with 13 minutes remaining. After the restart the Red Bulls of Ricciardo and Verstappen were topping the timesheets, and Kimi had managed to jump 6th -until the red flags came out again, as Sauber´s Ericsson crashed into the barriers damaging the right-front suspension in particular. Now there were still nine minutes left in the clock. When the session was restarted, both Red Bulls and Sebastian in his Ferrari came out on the intermediate tyres, whilst all the others were still on full-wets. By then a drying line was appearing in places. However, there was lots of water in others, and Williams´ Massa lost control of his FW38 and crashed heavily in Turn 4; the session was red-flagged for the third time already! Five minutes and twenty seconds were still remaining. At the restart everyone came out on the inters. Conditions were still pretty challenging, which Manor´s Haryanto proved only a moment later. The Indonesian Manor pilot crashed out, when there were only 1m 18s remaining! The session was red-flagged and Q1 wasn´t restarted anymore. The Mercedes teammates Rosberg and Hamilton were at the top with McLaren´s Alonso third and Ferrari´s Vettel fourth. In addition to Ericsson, Massa and Haryanto, who had crashed out, also both Renault drivers and Manor´s Wehrlein missed out on Q2. What an eventful Q1! The 18-minute first session ended up lasting for over an hour due to the four red-flag stoppages! I didn´t mind it, though as Sebastian´s former trainer Tommi Pärmäkoski was commentating the Finnish F1 broadcast and he had many interesting stories to tell behind the scenes!
In Q2 everyone came out on the inters, as there were still many wet patches on the track. But times improved faster than you could write them down, as the track improved with every lap. Williams´ Bottas was the first driver to switch to the supersoft slicks, and soon all the others also opted for the similar tyre choice. It was quite unbelievable, how fast the track conditions really improved; at the very end of the second session Kimi was topping the timesheets, but however, the Iceman ended up being knocked out of the final session! Kimi dropped as down as P14, which was quite shocking! Timing was everything in the drying conditions, and this time it didn´t work out for the Iceman unfortunately. I was so gutted for Kimi! Red Bull´s Verstappen, however, was outstandingly the fastest man in Q2 with Rosberg second and teammate Ricciardo third. Hamilton ran off road briefly on his last run, and the Briton just barely made it among the top ten. Haas´ Grosjean was the first driver to miss out on Q3. What caught my eye, was the fact, that both McLaren drivers made it into the decisive final segment!
It was amazing, how fast the track dried out! Everyone started to the final session on the red-marked supersoft slicks. Quite expectedly Hamilton took provisional pole with teammate Rosberg second. Red Bull seemed to be Mercedes´ closest rival, as Sebastian couldn´t quite match Red Bull´s pace. After his first attempt the German Ferrari ace was in P5. On his last run Hamilton had made the fastest time in sector one, but then he came across Alonso´s spun McLaren at the top of the hill; yellow flags ruined the Briton´s chance to make it on pole. By the time Rosberg got there the yellows were cleared, and in spite of some traffic Rosberg managed to snatch pole for the Hungarian GP. The yellow flags forced also Ricciardo to abort his final run, and the Australian had to settle for P3. Teammate Verstappen had missed his last run due to failed timing, and the Dutchman was fourth. Sebastian qualified 5th, Toro Rosso´s Sainz was impressive 6th, the McLaren duo of Alonso and Button 7th and 8th, Force India´s Hulkenberg 9th and Williams´ Bottas 10th. At the end of the day Sebastian was 9 tenths down on pole-setter Rosberg!
In the international media there has been a video clip, where a little boy gives Sebastian a drawing of Sebastian, Kimi and Max on the podium (Sebastian the winner, Kimi the runner-up and Max third). Sebastian seemed very delighted of the drawing and posed for a photo with the little Ferrari fan. A moment later it was shown, how Sebastian put the drawing on the wall of his pit garage! What an utterly touching gesture from the quadruple world champion! Ferrari definitely has some obstacles to overcome tomorrow, and who knows how the weather will turn out, but I cross my fingers that the podium turns out to be similar to that in the little boy´s drawing! Sebastian, Kimi and Max I believe in you! You have no idea how you make me feel just by driving flat out every time!! (And Tommi -looking forward to hearing more stories from you!)
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