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The new F1 season has begin officially with the first qualifying session of 2018. And as always Hamilton and his Mercedes have scored the first pole of new season. His team mate did not score a good position on the starting grid as he buried his Mercedes into the wall.
He will have to start from the pit lane because there is zero chance he can take his place on the 10th spot on the grid due to some heavy replacing that is needed on his car.
So Hamilton will start on pole, Raikkonen will join him on the first row. The second row is Vettel on third and Verstappen on the fourth spot.
Ricciardo qualified as fifth but will start on the 8th spot tomorrow because he was punished for an infraction yesterday during the second free practice when he was busy with a flying lap and did not slow down enough when a red flag was shown due to issue with the track. He did not comply with the rule that he had to slow down considerably but because he did not cause a dangerous situation with his failure to slow down enough, he was given a 3 place punishment rather than much harsher punishment (loss of places on the grid).
So Ricciardo will not be on the third row, the third row is for the 2 Haas drivers Magnussen and Grosjean. Haas is the American F1 team based in Kannapolis (North Carolina) and owned by Gene Haas (the founder of the Haas CNC racing team in Nascar).
The fourth row is reserved for Ricciardo and Hulkenberg.
Fifth row should be for Sainz and Bottas but as written before, he will have to start from the pit lane.
Then the next drivers will be (ranked from best to last:
Alonso
Vandoorne
Perez
Stroll
Ocon
Hartley
Ericson
Leclerc
Sirotkin
Gasly
The fastest qualifier was Hamilton with a 1:21.164, then was the 1:21.8xx gang, Raikonen with a 1:21.828, Vettel with 1:21.838 and Verstappen with 1:21.879 so with just a few hundreds of a second difference. Ricciardo was the only one in the 1:22 (low in the 22) and then there is the rest who are all at least a second slower than Ricciardo with the US Haas team (with Ferrari engines) who were the best of the rest.
The race will start in about 8.5 hours from now (if I am not mistaken) at least in the Netherlands were we are going into daylight saving time so we are going to loose one hour tonight so for all those who do not have that, the race will take place in 9.5 hours.
Normally races start at the top of the hour but this year the race will start at 10 minutes past the full hour.
This also will be the first season with the protective halo's for the drivers. Some drivers hate it others do not mind but they do make cars look any better IMHO but safety is more important than looks.
This halo also meant that the starting lights used to start the race had to be moved because some drivers had problems seeing the starting lights due to their halo.
He will have to start from the pit lane because there is zero chance he can take his place on the 10th spot on the grid due to some heavy replacing that is needed on his car.
So Hamilton will start on pole, Raikkonen will join him on the first row. The second row is Vettel on third and Verstappen on the fourth spot.
Ricciardo qualified as fifth but will start on the 8th spot tomorrow because he was punished for an infraction yesterday during the second free practice when he was busy with a flying lap and did not slow down enough when a red flag was shown due to issue with the track. He did not comply with the rule that he had to slow down considerably but because he did not cause a dangerous situation with his failure to slow down enough, he was given a 3 place punishment rather than much harsher punishment (loss of places on the grid).
So Ricciardo will not be on the third row, the third row is for the 2 Haas drivers Magnussen and Grosjean. Haas is the American F1 team based in Kannapolis (North Carolina) and owned by Gene Haas (the founder of the Haas CNC racing team in Nascar).
The fourth row is reserved for Ricciardo and Hulkenberg.
Fifth row should be for Sainz and Bottas but as written before, he will have to start from the pit lane.
Then the next drivers will be (ranked from best to last:
Alonso
Vandoorne
Perez
Stroll
Ocon
Hartley
Ericson
Leclerc
Sirotkin
Gasly
The fastest qualifier was Hamilton with a 1:21.164, then was the 1:21.8xx gang, Raikonen with a 1:21.828, Vettel with 1:21.838 and Verstappen with 1:21.879 so with just a few hundreds of a second difference. Ricciardo was the only one in the 1:22 (low in the 22) and then there is the rest who are all at least a second slower than Ricciardo with the US Haas team (with Ferrari engines) who were the best of the rest.
The race will start in about 8.5 hours from now (if I am not mistaken) at least in the Netherlands were we are going into daylight saving time so we are going to loose one hour tonight so for all those who do not have that, the race will take place in 9.5 hours.
Normally races start at the top of the hour but this year the race will start at 10 minutes past the full hour.
This also will be the first season with the protective halo's for the drivers. Some drivers hate it others do not mind but they do make cars look any better IMHO but safety is more important than looks.
This halo also meant that the starting lights used to start the race had to be moved because some drivers had problems seeing the starting lights due to their halo.