Lewis Hamilton will eventually tie Michael Schumacher's record of most number of pole positions in Formula 1, and will get past the F1 legend's tally of 68 too, just not at this year's Hungarian Grand Prix weekend. The Mercedes driver who was coming off a high of pole position, leading every lap and winning the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, could only manage fourth place today.
It was his championship rival Sebastian Vettel who will lead the field of twenty cars off the start-line tomorrow as he and Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen locked out the front row for the Italian squad. With track characteristics similar to that of the Circuit de Monaco, the 14-turn, 4.381km the relatively shorter wheelbase of Ferrari's SF70-H helped its drivers to outpace the silver arrows around the circuit's twisty turns that require a sharper turn-in.
With Hamilton complaining about vibrations from the tyres, he was almost two tenths of a second slower than Bottas, who is mathematically still in the hunt for this year's drivers' world championship.
SUPER SPEED
The qualifying times from all the runners revealed the jump in lap times from 2016 that was expected due to the new generation of F1 cars having a wider track, wider tyres and more downforce. The slowest of the 20 drivers was just 0.007 seconds slower than last year's pole position time of 1min.19.965sec. set by Nico Rosberg.
Vettel's pole time was a staggering 3.711 seconds faster than Rosberg's mark with Raikkonen just under two tenths slower in second place.
Bottas was just 0.086 seconds slower than his compatriot, indicating a close tussle between the two for top honours at a circuit that tends to attract a lot of Finnish supporters.
There were also numerous Dutch fans at the circuit near the Hungarian capital of Budapest to show their support for Red Bull-Renault's Max Verstappen, who out-qualified teammate Daniel Ricciardo by just 0.019 seconds.
The six drivers from the top three teams - Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull Racing - filled the front three rows of the starting grid with the six of them covered by less than 0.6 seconds.
Nico Hulkenberg of Renault F1, McLaren-Honda's Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne and Toro Rosso-Renault's Carlos Sainz Jr. completed the top ten.
PALMER STRUGGLES AMID KUBICA TALK
Just outside the top ten was the other Renault of Jolyon Palmer, who was eliminated in the second of three parts of qualifying while teammate Hulkenberg set a lap that was over 0.7 seconds faster.
While the French manufacturer have denied that replacing Palmer during the 2017 season itself is a possibility, they are gearing up to give the popular Polish driver Robert Kubica an evaluation run in a current F1 car to determine whether he is ready for a comeback.
Kubica badly injured his right hand during a crash while participating in a tarmac rally just ahead of the start of the 2011 F1 season, when much was expected of him after a very strong 2010 season with Renault.
Since his time away, he has competed in WRC-2 - winning the title in 2013 - and in the World Rally Championship too from 2013 to 2016, taking part in 33 rallies and being credited with 14 stage wins.
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