Jenson Button took pole position for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa on Saturday afternoon, beating Kamui Kobayashi by three-tenths. The Sauber driver thus equals the best ever qualifying for a Japanese driver in F1, matching Takuma Sato’s front row in the European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring in 2004. Pastor Maldonado was third for Williams ahead of Kimi Raikkonen’s Lotus, Sergio Perez’s Sauber and Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari. Mark Webber qualified seventh but will drop back because of a penalty, leaving Lewis Hamilton seventh on the grid, ahead of Romain Grosjean and Paul di Resta. Sebastian Vettel will start 10th.
Think Lewis should have serious thoughts about staying at McLaren, he should drop his management and go it alone on some sort of performance wage at Williams. They are on a bounce, it would of been good to see Rubens there this year, pastor is fast though.
Well done button and sauber for great efforts.
Webber was 6th
Your puns are terrible. please stop..
*Superb headline*
Did Lotus finally use their new double DRS?
IF they did then like Mercedes the double DRS is worth squat.
That is a bizarre starting grid!
The U.S. announcers stated that Hamilton Tweeted a post Q3 message that Button had the new trick DRS rear wing and he did not.
If Hambone has a chance at winning the drivers Championship and Jense is out of it, isn’t it a strange choice to give a potential wining equipment upgrade to Button in lieu of Hamilton??? Or is the Tweet an excuse by Lewis for his poor Q result????
As you probably know by now (but just in case you don’t), McLaren brought new rear wings for both drivers, but Hamilton decided he preferred the old one. Bad move.
Could the grid look like this for the whole second half of the season?
Does anyone have a reason why Hamilton was on a higher downforce set-up?
Surely there was more than one wing available.
Can anyone explain why Hamilton opted for a higher downforce set-up.
Surely McLaren had enough low downforce wings available.
Sectors 1 & 3 are where the overtaking places are so why compromise that for possible tyre longevity.
Confused. But maybe tomorrow will give answers.
Ian, I read somewhere Lewis wasn’t too keen on the new wing and balance, but still doesn’t answer why the high down force, unless they know something with the tires not keeping the temps with s1 & s2. but still doesn’t make sense as i’m sure keeping someone at bay in s2 is easier than s1 & s2 if your down on top end.
We will see soon enough.
It is interesting that all the front-runners in the championship, are apparently out-of-position – except Kimi
Hamilton said that he didn’t get on with the low-downforce wing & opted for the high-downforce.
He obviously regretted that decision (Damn, WTF etc).
He feels that ‘Jenson can win easily with that (extra) speed’.
well done button about time, ehmm guess you know im a fan, now he needs to do the big job of getting max points and the second half of his season has to be more consistant to stand a chance.
Jensen not Intercepted!
Haha most excellent!