British Grand Prix 2016 qualifying results: Lewis Hamilton takes pole at Silverstone

Lewis Hamilton will be on pole for the British Grand Prix, beating out teammate Nico Rosberg for the spot. Hamilton trails Rosberg in the Drivers’ Championship by just 11 points.

The gap has been closing with each race, and shrunk further after the European Grand Prix when the Mercedes teammates crashed together on the final lap, forcing Rosberg back a few places. Hamilton took the win in that race.

It was a rough qualifying for some drivers, as race stewards adopted a zero tolerance policy for drivers who went beyond track limits. Any driver who went beyond the limits had their qualifying times wiped out, and multiple drivers had this happen throughout the day.

Hamilton had provisional pole after putting together a brilliant lap in the third qualifying session, but he had his time of 1:29.339 deleted due to the zero tolerance policy. But Hamilton went back out there and managed to set another blistering lap to take pole position, and Rosberg’s second attempt was not good enough to beat Hamilton’s lap.

Max Verstappen of Red Bull managed to qualify in third place, just ahead of teammate Daniel Ricciardo. Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari qualified in sixth, but is facing a five-place grid penalty and will start 11th in the actual race. Kimi Räikkönen of Ferrari qualified just above Vettel in fifth place.

Unfortunately, Jenson Button, who started in third at the Austrian Grand Prix, was bumped out of the first qualifying session with the McLaren engineers were unable to get him out for another lap. He only did three laps before he was stuck in the garage.

Then there was some controversy as it was unclear if Button was out due to Kevin Magnussen potentially getting his time wiped out due to exceeding the track limits. Four minutes of the second qualifying session elapsed before it was sorted out that Button was indeed out of qualifying and that Magnussen would advance.

Button had jogged back to the garage, put his helmet back on and got in his car in anticipation, but he was unable to have a go at the second qualifying session, officially qualifying in 17th, a massive disappointment.

Marcus Ericsson of Sauber did not take part in qualifying after a nasty crash in the third practice session. He was taken to the hospital after the crash for “routine check-ups,” but was forced to miss the session which was only hours away at that point.

Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez of the American-owned Haas F1 Team both had a substandard qualifying session, and they qualified in 13th and 14th, respectively. Felipe Massa of Williams had a rough session and qualified in 12th. It’s been a disappointing season for Williams, who hung on with the front of the pack last season and seem to have regressed for no explainable reason.

The full qualifying order is below: