F1 Paddock Notebook - British GP Saturday

Recapping all of the additional news and notes following qualifying day for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Crash.net F1 Editor Luke Smith brings you his paddock notebook.

- Lewis Hamilton’s charge to pole position for the British Grand Prix on Saturday saw him extend his dominant record in qualifying for his home grand prix. You have to go back to 2014 for the last time Hamilton was defeated on a Saturday at Silverstone when Nico Rosberg took pole position for Mercedes. The Silver Arrows’ qualifying success streak goes all the way back to 2012.

- Hamilton’s 76th career pole extended his advantage at the top of the all-time pole position list in F1, and also was the 50th to come in Mercedes colours since joining the team at the start of 2013.

- Hamilton also became the outright record holder for British Grand Prix pole positions, with this marking his sixth home pole, pulling clear of Jim Clark, with whom he previously shared the record.

- Sebastian Vettel was left to settle for P2 after failing to improve on his final lap in qualifying, finishing 0.044 seconds back from Hamilton. Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen took P3, finishing only 0.098 seconds off the pole time.

- Valtteri Bottas wound up fourth in the second Mercedes, but was left to rue a sloppy final lap which the Finn believes cost him a potential second straight pole.

- Red Bull was out of touch in qualifying as Verstappen and Ricciardo finished a distant fifth and sixth. Ricciardo’s qualifying was complicated by an issue that meant he could not use DRS on his first Q3 run, but was able to use it on his second attempt.

- Charles Leclerc continued his impressive qualifying form to reach Q3 for the second time in the last three races. Sauber’s pace received praise from both Pierre Gasly and Fernando Alonso, the latter saying there were now “three Ferraris” for McLaren to beat.

- All of the top 10 qualifiers made it through to the final stage of the session on the Soft compound tyre, meaning none of them will start on either the Medium or the Hard tomorrow.

- Carlos Sainz Jr. was a surprise elimination in Q1 on Saturday, failing to reach Q3 for the first time this season. Teammate Nico Hulkenberg dropped out in Q2, meaning Renault’s own streak ended, but the German driver was happy to be P11 given his free tyre choice.

- Stoffel Vandoorne struggled to his third straight Q1 exit, finishing half a second off 16th-placed Sainz. The Belgian said the car was “undriveable” through Q1.

- New McLaren sporting director Gil de Ferran made his first official appearance in a McLaren media call on Saturday at Silverstone, and echoed Brown’s comments from a couple of days ago about it taking time for changes to take effect and progress to be made at McLaren.

- No action was taken by the stewards against Sergey Sirotkin despite his failure to enter the pit lane due to the red flag. The stewards deemed that he was already fully-committed to Turn 15, meaning he could not get into pit entry in a reasonable fashion despite an attempt.

- Brendon Hartley will start Sunday’s race from the pit lane after Toro Rosso changed the monocoque of his car following his suspension failure in FP3. Hartley was unable to take part in qualifying as a result of the crash damage, and called the pit lane start “annoying”, saying he would have preferred to start on the grid.

- Toro Rosso teammate Pierre Gasly was left lamenting a lack of power from his Honda engine, believing the team is losing as much as nine-tenths of a second on the straights compared to its rivals. Gasly doubts the team will be able to score points at Silverstone without incidents for cars further ahead.