Lewis Hamilton reckons he was on course to snatch pole position from Nico Rosberg before Daniil Kvyat’s dramatic qualifying crash halted qualifying on Saturday.
The session for today’s Japanese Grand Prix came to a premature end after Kvyat lost control of his Red Bull and crashed into the barriers at 120mph. Luckily, he was unhurt.
Hamilton was midway through his final timed lap when he was forced to ease off as the red flags brought an immediate halt to proceedings.
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“I was working on perhaps the best lap I have ever done here, but I never got to finish it,” said Hamilton, who made a small mistake on his first run in yesterday’s top-10 shoot-out.
“I lost a tenth and a half in the last corner on my first lap, but the next lap was pretty quick – it was really fast – by turn six I was already up by a lot.
“There was still a long way to go in the lap, but it doesn’t really matter. It was a positive feeling for me and I know that tomorrow I have good pace.”
Hamilton won last year’s shortened race after Jules Bianchi’s ultimately fatal accident in the wet conditions.
And the weather could play a part today with rain predicted to fall over the Suzuka track.
Rosberg started from pole in Japan last year but Hamilton got the better of his Mercedes team-mate in the torrid conditions.
.@LewisHamilton claimed P2, just 0.076 behind @nico_rosberg, to make it an all-Mercedes front row lockout for the tenth time in 2015
— MERCEDES AMG F1 (@MercedesAMGF1) September 26, 2015
“Nico would have watched the race from last year and he would have improved on the areas where he was losing time,” Hamilton added.
“There is a big document at the end of the race – whether he wins or I win – which explains why the other one was quicker. If it rains tomorrow he will be faster because he would have learned from those documents but it does make it more of a lottery.”
For Rosberg it was his first pole in over four months in a season which Hamilton has dominated. Indeed, it will be only the second time in 14 grands prix that he will have started ahead of his team-mate when the lights go out.
“I did not have a monkey on my back and I don’t think of it that way,” said Rosberg, who trails his Mercedes team-mate by 41 points in the championship with six races remaining.
“For me, I just want to win this weekend and it is great to be first because that gives me a better chance tomorrow.” Much of the talk heading into this week’s race was around whether Mercedes could bounce back from their off-key display in Singapore.
The answer was an emphatic one as Rosberg and Hamilton locked out the front row, three quarters of a second faster than Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel who won last Sunday.
The German will start from fourth with the Williams of Valtteri Bottas third on the grid.
Rosberg added: “We were confident of a recovery but Singapore was very bad. It is great to see that the car was as dominant as it was before.”
Kvyat will start today’s race from the pit lane after his accident.
The session was red flagged after he lost control of his Red Bull on the exit of turn 10. His car was launched into the air and completed a 360 degree spin before it landed upright.
The left-hand side of his Red Bull was completely destroyed and his team was working through the night to change his chassis so he could take part in the race.
“I am massively sorry for the guys who will have to do quite a job,” said Kvyat, who was given the all-clear to take part in the race after a brief visit to the on-track medical centre.
“The car did not look great so I will be supporting them tonight. I am not as good at building the car as they are but I will stay with them as long as I can because I feel sorry for them.”
Kvyat’s high-speed crash, which brought a premature end to qualifying, registered at 20G.
And his harrowing incident came after Jules Bianchi’s ultimately fatal accident here last year.
Bianchi died in July after he succumbed to the horrific brain injuries he sustained after crashing into a recovery vehicle in the rain-hit race.
Explaining the incident, Kvyat said: “It was a rookie mistake, I put two wheels on the grass and that’s it.
“It was by far the hardest crash I have had. I have never had a crash in my career until now – maybe karting – but I have never rolled the car. Unfortunately, there is a first time for everything.”
Kvyat’s Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, who qualified seventh, added: “It was spectacular and got everyone talking, but it is good he is okay. It is a silly accident but it is easy to do.
“As a driver you try to be greedy and use as much of the track as possible as it is the quickest way to go, but it is sometimes easy to happen – as silly an accident as it is – because you are only using your peripheral vision to see the outside of the track.
“He would have been looking at the apex to the right so he would not have been looking at the grass.”
