Bottas inherits pole position as Hamilton takes 10 place grid penalty

Lewis Hamilton was seriously quick all weekend long throughout the practice sessions and moving into qualifying. He managed to minimize the damage of his grid penalty by qualifying first and will now start 11th.

Bottas came home second a tenth down on Hamilton but claimed he will “focus on his own race tomorrow” following the inheritance of P1.

Verstappen was third fastest but will now start on the front row of the grid due to Hamilton’s penalty.

Early in the session there were some shock entries and exits from Q1 into Q2. Daniel Ricciardo could not find the pace in the difficult conditions and failed to make it into Q2 finishing 16th missing out by a substantial 7 tenths.

Meanwhile, Haas driver Schumacher managed to make it into Q2 and finally qualified a personal best of 14th following the grid penalty of Carlos Sainz who will start 20th.

Five different teams will make up the top five spots of the starting grid for Sunday’s race with Charles Leclerc making it up to 3rd with a last minute flying lap that payed off immensely.

Pierre Gasly continued his fantastic pace into Q3 making it up to P4 for the GP. After his excellent FP3 result it was delightful to see him able to convert that into a successful qualifying result.

Alpine’s Fernando Alonso clinched P5 making up the final fifth different manufacturer in the top five. His teammate Ocon was only fast enough for 11th missing Q3 by 8 tenths.

George Russell was on a scorcher of a lap ready to jump into his usual “Mr. Saturday” role in Q3 but swang his Williams wide exiting the final turn causing him to lose out by several tenths, eventually qualifying 13th.

Tsunoda also made an appearance in Q3 slotting into 9th nearing his best qualifying result of 7th.

Here are how the drivers qualified:

But the drivers will start as so, with the applied grid penalties:

_{Featured image source: twitter.com/mercedesamgf1}