F1 2016: Hamilton bests Rosberg for pole ahead of crucial United States Grand Prix

With a new pole position record, defending - and slightly embattled - F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton got first blood in his battle to stop the roll his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg has been on. Hamilton's first pole at the United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas was won fairly emphatically when the Briton snatched it away from Rosberg by 0.215 seconds. A small gap for some but given some of the tight margins by which the two championship contenders have beaten each other before, it would go down as decisive.

Hamilton's lap of 1min. 34.999sec. was a near perfect demonstration of controlled aggression from the three-time champion as compared to Rosberg who visibly had trouble picking a good line through the uphill first corner of the 20-turn, 5.513km circuit.

Red Bull Racing had given a glimpse of opposition to the dominant Mercedes team in third free practice but that was until the newly-crowned three-time constructor's world champions ran a more powerful engine setting in qualifying. It has been a trend in F1 of late, but since Hamilton's engine failure in Sepang, Mercedes has run a more conservative setting on race-day. It is something that may make the half-a-second a lap gap to Red Bull Racing's Daniel Ricciardo not as significant during the 56-lap race.

In addition to which the Australian will be starting on the super-soft Pirelli compounds rather than the soft compounds that the Mercedes drivers used in the second segment of the three-part qualifying session.

Red Bull Racing are going for a split in their race strategy with Max Verstappen on soft tyres.

Not looking like a factor for a race win at all, however, are the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel, with Vettel being out-qualified by the Finn whose improved form has seen him rise above the former four-time world champion in the points standings.

Renault F1's new signee for 2017, Nico Hulkenberg, was next in the qualifying standing in his Force India-Mercedes ahead of the Williams-Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa.

Toro Rosso-Ferrari's Carlos Sainz rounded out the top ten.