Hamilton dominates qualifying to minimise grid penalty

Lewis Hamilton after the qualifying session on Saturday. Pic/AFP

Lewis Hamilton found a silver lining on Saturday, dominating qualifying for the Turkish Grand Prix to minimise the damage from the 10-place grid penalty Mercedes decided to incur by changing his engine ahead of the race.

At a race where qualifying was red flagged last season and after morning practice was also interrupted by a red flag as drivers spun on a wet track, qualifying started under a cloud as team radar predicted that rain would start to fall on parts of course in less than three minutes.

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Yet, the rain held off and, after a panicky start, Hamilton improved his time in each of the three qualifying phases. After breaking the 16-year-old track record in practice on Friday broke it again in each of the three qualifying sessions. He finished the session with a time of 1min 22.868sec, 0.130sec ahead of Valtteri Bottas with Max Verstappen 0.328 back.

"The track's completely different," said Hamilton. He leads Verstappen by two points in the standings and will start nine places behind the Dutchman on Sunday even though the Mercedes has been faster all weekend. "I'll give it everything," said Hamilton. "Tomorrow is going to be difficult to move up. Hopefully we can give the fans a good race."

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