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McLaren Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton has wowed his home crowds with a
scintillating pole position lap on Bridgestone's medium compound Potenza at
Silverstone for the British Grand Prix.
The grey skies of Friday gave way to blue skies on Saturday and the lap
times on both Bridgestone's hard and medium Potenzas continued to fall.
Hamilton's pole lap of 1min 19.997secs, set in the dying seconds of the
final qualifying session, was over two tenths faster than last year's pole.
Kimi Raikkonen will start tomorrow's 60 lap race on the front row alongside
Hamilton. The Ferrari driver was quickest in the morning practice session,
with a time of 1min 19.751secs set on the hard compound Potenza. Starting
from third place on the grid tomorrow will be Fernando Alonso, who set the
day's fastest lap with a 1min 19.152secs in Q2, also on the hard compound.
With less cloud and wind than yesterday, teams were able to undertake more
meaningful running on the hard and medium compound Bridgestone Potenzas in
the morning practice session. The hard compound Bridgestone Potenza should
offer a more consistent performance than the medium compound in tomorrow's
race, but the close lap times between the two should mean stint length
variations between pit stops.
Kees van de Grint, Bridgestone Motorsport Head of Track Engineering
Operations said:
"This was an exciting qualifying session, with a close fought battle between
four drivers for pole. The weather was good today, and the home crowd was
able to cheer a British pole winner at the home of British motorsport. Tyre
performance was good, with a slight track improvement meaning there was less
graining. Both compounds of Bridgestone Potenza had an advantage in a
particular sector, but
overall there was very little to choose between the two on lap time. Pole
position was set by Lewis Hamilton on the medium compound, but today's
fastest lap was set by Fernando Alonso on the hard compound. This lap was
over a second quicker than last year's fastest, and pole was faster than
last year too, showing that we have two high performance racing tyres here
this weekend."
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