F1 2018: Lewis Hamilton claims Belgian Grand Prix pole after wet and wild finish

Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes AMG F1 claimed his 78th career pole position and his fifth at the Belgian Grand Prix since his Formula 1 debut in 2007 after a closely fought session that ended with rain in the third and final segment of qualifying causing a wild finish. 

After the end of the seond segment of qualifying that was topped by Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel with a sensationally fast time of 1min41.501sec around the 19-turn, 7.004km Spa-Francorchamps circuit, Hamilton trailed by just 0.052 seconds. That suggested a similarly close battle between this year's championship rivals who are separated by 24 points in the race for the drivers' world championship with Hamilton leading. 

The first F1 race weekend after the championship's summer break since the Hungarian Grand Prix did offer more excitement than anticipated after a brief downpour prompted drivers to switch to intermediate tyres (it was not wet enough for heavily treaded wet weather tyres) from slicks and try to set a time on a steadily drying track.  

It resulted in Hamilton taking pole position with a time of 1min58.179sec, just over 0.7 seconds faster than Vettel, whose time was almost three seconds faster than that of Force India-Mercedes' Esteban Ocon, with the other Force India of Sergio Perez in fourth place. 

Force India had undergone a tumultous summer break with Vijay Mallya losing control of the team as financial difficulties had it taken over British 'administrators' before being bought by a consortium led by the billionaire Lawrence Stroll, father of Williams-Mercedes driver Lance Stroll. Now officially called Racing Point Force India Formula 1 Team (and having to forfeit all the points it had scored so far this season), the team was able to quickly get its drivers out on a drying track to allow them to annex the second row of the starting grid. 

Vettel's Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen was forced to sit out the end of the third part of qualifying as his car didn't have enough fuel left in it to go out for a late run. He thus ended up getting outqualified by Haas-Ferrari's Romain Grosjean. 

Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull-Renault were seventh and eighth while Haas Ferrari's Kevin Magnussen and Mercedes AMG F1's Valtteri Bottas completed the top ten.