Nico Rosberg celebrates his seventh pole of his career by defeating teammate Lewis Hamilton Saturday afternoon at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal. [Photo by Sutton Images]
MONTREAL, Canada- Normally on a great day, Lewis Hamilton owns the Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve. The Briton has won three poles and three races in the past. However, on Saturday afternoon in qualifying for Sunday’s Grand Prix of Canada, it was not Hamilton, but his teammate, Nico Rosberg, who set a 1:14:874 fastest time to take his seventh pole of his career. In a great last minute effort, Sebastian Vettel took third in his Red Bull Renault.
Afterwards, Rosberg first tried not to recognize that Hamilton had a good record in Canada.
“I do not know about Lewis (Hamilton) and his record”, Rosberg stated, “but it is a track where we are strong. All the more, we are very, very happy and it worked out, and it is great. It was a fantastic day, and we are progressing all the time and it is really cool.”
Although everyone was present when the first session got under way, one driver who was not was Mexican Esteban Gutierrez, who crashed his Sauber heavily in the final practice session, severely damaging his car, which made him miss qualifying and will start the race from the pit lane. With 16 seconds to go in the session, Marcus Ericcson crashed his Caterham in turn nine, bringing out a red flag to end the session. By this time, Hamilton already had the fastest time of 1:15:750.
Hamilton kept things going in the following session with an improved time of 1:15:054, while Sergio Perez, Romain Grosjean, Dani Kvyat, Adrian Sutil, Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen failed to advance.
But considering Hamilton’s domination of whole day, it was Rosberg who managed to get the best time of the week, and considering the good attempt Hamilton made, he could not pass Rosberg’s best time, giving the German his second consecutive pole.
Leading the rest of the grid were the Williams entries of Valterri Bottas and Felipe Massa, who took fourth and fifth, respectively, while Daniel Riccairdo finished sixth. Fernando Alonso was seventh in his Ferrari, while Jean-Eric Vergne finished in eighth. Jenson Button and Kimi Raikkonen round out the top ten.
Afterwards, Rosberg explained despite Hamilton’s domination this weekend, what he can do to defeat him.
“It is working on it every day”, he added. “All the time and working with the engineers and improving set up is one of the areas where I can progress.” Rosberg concluded.
Mark Gero has written formula one racing stories since 2002 on the Internet for such sites as Motorsport.com, Racing Information Service News and for a brief time at the Munich Eye newspaper in Munich, Germany along with Autoweek online. Mark also has a diploma in journalism from the London School of Journalism in London, England and in addition a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from Ashford University in Clinton, Iowa.