Hungarian GP: Lewis Hamilton steals pole for the first time in more than a year

Mercedes fans are ecstatic after Lewis Hamilton snatched pole position away from Max Verstappen at the Hungarian Grand Prix on Saturday. The 12th round of the 2023 Formula 1 World Championship will see the seven-time world champion start from the front for the first time since the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, which seems like a lifetime ago.

In fact, Hamilton admitted that despite all of his previous victories and pole positions throughout his illustrious career, clinching pole again "feels like the first time."

Hamilton was left winless in 2022, and this season did not appear to be going any better until massive upgrades this summer allowed the silver arrows to close the gap to the dominant Red Bulls.

The gap was a narrow 0.003 seconds between Hamilton and Verstappen, but Mercedes will take what they can get in what has been an extremely challenging season so far. After the session, Hamilton admitted that "It's been a crazy year and a half."

His voice was hoarse from shouting so much in the cockpit when he faced Danica Patrick for the post-qualifying interview. "It's amazing, that feeling. I feel so grateful to be up here because the team have worked so hard. We've been pushing so hard over this time to finally get a pole, it just feels like the first time," he said.

Hamilton will have to stay focused on the task at hand if he wants to claim victory on Sunday. Starting right beside him is championship leader Max Verstappen, followed by McLaren driver Lando Norris. Neither of those two will pass up the opportunity to overtake at the start, and it also remains to be seen if the Mercedes will have enough race pace to stay in front.

Disaster for Mercedes in Q1

The two Mercedes drivers will be at opposite ends of the grid after George Russell failed to make it out of Q1. He will be starting from 18th place after a miscalculation from the team sent him out amid a lot of traffic for his final flying lap of the session.

It was quite chaotic as the drivers elbowed each other out to get a good piece of empty track to start their flying laps. This left Russell behind several cars and he was not able to squeeze the most out of his car. "My whole session was on track at the wrong time, wrong points, taking way too much risk as a team," he said, as quoted by Motorsport.com

He also said that the so-called "gentleman's agreement" between drivers about overtaking in the outlap of qualifying did not appear to exist. However, he admitted that he had not hard feelings towards the other competitors. "Not going to blame any of the drivers, we're all fighting for ourselves. As a team, we should have done a much better job."

Apart from Russell, Alex Albon (Williams), Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri), Kevin Magnussen (Haas) and Logan Sargeant (Williams) were also eliminated after Q1.

Who didn't make it out of Q2?

Ferrari will be extremely disappointed to lose Carlos Sainz in Q2, who was knocked out by fellow Spaniard Fernando Alonso by a mere 0.002s. Both Alpine cars driven by Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly did not make it to Q3, and neither did Alonso's teammate Lance Stroll. Daniel Ricciardo is back in action after only half a season away from a race seat, and even though he did not manage to take his AlphaTauri to Q3, he will at least be relieved to have outqualified his teammate, Yuki Tsunoda.

Q3 took an unexpected turn

As expected, Verstappen set the pace in Q3, and looked to be on course to set yet another pole position. However, he failed to improve his time on his final run and Hamilton managed to squeeze out maximum performance from his Mercedes. The seven-time champion clocked in at 1m16.609s, beating the Dutchman by only 0.003s.

Norris and his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri will be following the two world champions, with Zhou, Leclerc, Bottas, Alonso, Perez and Nico Hulkenberg making up an unexpected top 10.