Sao Paulo: Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton gave Mercedes their 100th pole position at the Brazilian Grand Prix here Saturday with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, fined and reprimanded for a weighbridge incident, starting alongside.
The pole, in a rain-affected session at Interlagos, was a record-extending 82nd of Hamilton’s career and his 10th of a season that has already seen the Briton clinch his fifth World Championship. Mercedes will seal the constructors’ title unless Ferrari outscore them by 13 points.
Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas, who was on pole in Brazil last year, qualified third with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen fourth on an all-Finnish second row. He was the only one to improve on his final flying lap, after earlier securing provisional pole, with a best time of one minute 07.281 seconds — a track record and more than a second quicker than last year’s pole.
Hamilton and Vettel provided the main talking points of the session, with the former fortunate to escape the immediate attention of the stewards after nearly colliding with the Williams of Russian Sergey Sirotkin in the second phase. Raikkonen also had to swerve to avoid him in another incident.
Vettel’s summons by the stewards was inevitable after he was called in for weighing at a critical point in the second phase with rain threatening, making it crucial to get in an early timed lap. With a cone barring access to the weighbridge, he drove into it and then gesticulated angrily for officials to hurry up, before driving off again in a breach of the regulations. Stewards handed the four-time World Champion a reprimand for failing to follow instructions, his first of the season, and a 25,000 euros ($28,335.00) fine.