The Qualifying – Q1 of British GP started with a light drizzle and everyone started their laps with intermediate tyres. Daniel Riccardio started the session well but his Redbull’s turbo failed and Q1 was stopped to clear the car. The session restarted few minutes later where everyone posted their times with intermediate tyres. Red Bull’s Verstappen topped the chart, Hamilton and Bottas came second and third, with Ferrari’s Vettel on fourth and Kimi at fifth. But the real star of Q1 was Alonso on the slow Honda engined McLaren, who facing a 30 spot grid penalty for an engine change gambled with slick tyres at the final moments of the session. Alonso just nibbled to start his lap fractions before the session ended and did emerge in P1 to shock everyone.
Stroll, Magnussen, Wehrlein, Ericsson and Ricciardo were knocked out of Q1.
On Q2 everyone headed out in super soft tryes but Valteri bottas went with soft tyres for a different race strategy due to his 5 spot grid penalty for a gear box change. Hamilton went quickest by a full second, Bottas was within 0.8s of Hamilton’s time on the softs. Vettel came third ahead of Raikkonen and Verstappen on fifth. Palmer, Kvyat, Alonso, Sainz and Massa are all out in Q2.
Q3 started with Hamilton making a record breaking lap time of 1’27.231s but Roman Grosjean complained Lewis impeded his fying lap costing him 0.3 secs while Lewis was on the preparation lap. On the final run of Q3, Bottas who was 2nd ran wide to lose time and was beaten by Vettel on the Ferrari while Raikkonen overcame both of them to go second on the grid behind Lewis.
The home hero Lewis Hamilton clocked his final lap and broke the Silverstone record barrier further by posting a sensational 1’26.600, more than half a second quicker than Kimi’s time to his 5th pole in his home track but an investigation was pending.
Finally the stewards ruled statement no further action on Hamilton and said: “While GRO potentially may have been affected by presence of HAM, he was not impeded.” Therefore Hamilton kept his pole in his home grand prix.
