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F1: Hamilton grabs pole position in McLaren one-two in Hungary

World Championship leader Lewis Hamilton qualified fastest yesterday and will start today’s Hungarian Grand Prix in pole position.

The English driver spearheaded a McLaren one-two setting a time of 1 minute, 20.899 seconds, just 0.2 seconds ahead of teammate Finn Heikki Kovalainen. He will bid to become the first driver to win three races in a row since Michael Schumacher triumphed in the US, French and German Grand Prix two years ago.

“It’s been a pretty decent weekend for us so far and I feel safe with the position we’re in,” Hamilton told a news conference. “The team have done a great job in improving our car even from the last weekend and it would be great to get a one-two on Sunday. It would be about time.”

Ferrari’s Felipe Massa was third, but teammate and reigning champion Kimi Raikkonen could only finish sixth, over half-a-second adrift of Hamilton.

“I wasn’t 100 percent happy with my laps in Q3,” said Massa, who trails Hamilton by four points in the standings. “I went out on the track at a little bit of a wrong time when there were too many cars around. That made it really tricky for the preparation of my tires, but I think our lap times from the first two qualifying sessions showed that we are pretty strong.”

BMW’s Robert Kibica overcame difficult conditions and will start in fourth, while Toyota’s Timo Glock bagged his best qualifying position of fifth.

Germany’s Nick Heidfeld was the biggest casualty of the first qualifying session as the BMW driver could finish only 16th, waving his arm in anger and frustration as he crossed the line. Heidfeld was joined by usual suspects Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil of Force India, with Honda’s Rubens Barrichello and Williams racer Kazuki Nakajima also missing out.

Nico Rosberg completed a disappointing afternoon for Williams as he failed to take to the track in the second session. Others going out were the Toro Rosso duo of Sebastien Bourdais and Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull’s David Coulthard and Honda’s Jenson Button.
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