Lewis Hamilton waited out a torrential downpour before snatching pole position at the Malaysian Grand Prix in a wet and wild qualifying session on Saturday.
The Mercedes driver and reigning world champion set a fastest time of 1min 49.834sec, ahead of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, after rain halted qualifying for 35 minutes.
Australian Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo qualified fourth in 1:51.541, just ahead of teammate Daniil Kvyat and appeared to be helped by the wet conditions.
Ricciardo will line up alongside the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg – the German third fastest, but almost half a second off the pace set by teammate Hamilton.
The commanding drive from Hamilton, hit by mechanical problems this week, will fuel his charge towards a second race win after his dominating season-opener in Australia.
Vettel was the day’s other big winner and he whooped and hollered to his team as he seized second place from Rosberg in the dying seconds.
In just his second start in Formula One, 17-year-old Max Verstappen will start from sixth in Sunday’s race.
“It was a fantastic job for the team to have us both (Hamilton and Rosberg) up here again,” a delighted Hamilton said.
Rosberg paid the price for a sticky Q3 when Vettel beat him into second place with 1:49.908 at the death.
“I just didn’t drive well enough; I’m annoyed by that,” Rosberg frowned. “Third place is not good enough.”
It might not be good enough for the German but it is a lot better than where former world champions Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso are placed.
The McLaren duo had to deal with sub-par cars again to be well off the pace in 17th and 18th respectively – slowest of any of the cars to undertake qualifying.
Also unlucky was Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen who had his Q2 run hampered by a monsoonal downpour.
“Unfortunately Kimi, we are P11 and, with the rain, it will be impossible to improve on that position,” Ferrari informed the Finn over the team radio.
Rounding out the top 10 are Williams duo Felipe Massa (seventh) and Valtteri Bottas (ninth), with Lotus driver Romain Grosjean in eighth and the Sauber of Marcus Ericsson in tenth.
Red Bulls’ improvement might just delight Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone who on Friday told teams to stop moaning and focus on improving after an uprising of complaints rocked the start of the new season.
Ecclestone said he was looking at ways to make F1 more competitive and interesting, with ideas including a “Grand Slam” of races and awarding points for qualifying.
But he said teams were also spending too much time blaming complex hybrid engines, mastered by Mercedes but giving problems to others, rather than “getting the job done”.
“I’ve no complaints or problems about Mercedes doing what they are doing. The complaint I’ve got is the others not doing the same.
“A lot of them tend to be blaming the engine and perhaps its only 50 per cent of the problem. The other 50 per cent is that they, themselves, are not getting the job done.”
