2018 Belgian GP F1: Hamilton takes his sixth pole ahead of Vettel and a surprising Ocon

Ferrari seems to have been cursed, if you’ll pardon the expression. Almost a month ago, in Hungary, the Italian team had been the fastest on the dry track, but then the rain arrived and Hamilton claimed pole position, going on to win the race as well. At the 2018 Belgian GP, on the return to racing after the summer break, history has repeated itself , unfortunately for Ferrari.

Both Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Räikkönen had been the fastest in the free practice sessions, so at Ferrari they were rubbing their hands together at the prospect of pole position for one of their drivers. But at the decisive moment, in Q3, the rain arrived and with changing track conditions, Lewis Hamilton once again proved better than Vettel. The Briton thus claimed his sixth pole position of the season.

The joy for the Mercedes driver is even greater when we consider that today he has written another page of history. Until now, Hamilton had taken pole four times at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, matching three drivers in this respect: Argentina’s Juan Manuel Fangio, Brazil’s Ayrton Senna and France’s Alain Prost. Now, with this new pole position, he has five, placing him a step above these three great legends and alone as the king of poles at the Belgian circuit.

Behind Hamilton and Vettel comes a surprise, as the two Force India drivers will line up third and fourth: Esteban Ocon third and Sergio Pérez fourth. It has been a long time since the pink cars were seen in those positions on the grid, ahead of the two Red Bulls, which got their strategy completely wrong (something that is becoming a habit), and ahead of Kimi Räikkönen, who had some problem, as he did not go out on track to improve his time when conditions allowed it.

Spa is not going to be a circuit for Spanish drivers, unless luck smiles on them greatly tomorrow, given that neither of the two drivers got past Q1. Carlos Sainz was not expecting much, but a little more than this, and he appeared angry in his statements. Fernando Alonso, for his part, seemed resigned and aware that there is not much to be done at Spa, and this time the miracle of scoring points seems very, very distant.

In the last positions on the grid we will see two drivers who are not usually found in those places, Nico Hülkenberg and Valtteri Bottas. Both the Renault and the Mercedes drivers have been penalised to start from the back of the grid for changing their engine. Keep this in mind when drawing up the starting grid for tomorrow’s race, which starts at 15:00, based on the times from today’s Saturday qualifying session, which were as follows: