Rosberg takes hard fought Brazilian pole position

F1 Grand Prix, GP Brazil, Autódromo José Carlos Pace, Interlagos

Nico Rosberg secured pole position by just 0.033s over his team mate Lewis Hamilton. The session was tense at the front, with Williams close to securing pole as well. Behind the Mercedes front row on the grid, Bottas will start from third, ahead of home hero Felipe Massa.

3 minutes after the start of Q1, Adrian Sutil is the first to go out on the option tyres. Team mate Esteban Gutierrez and Daniel Ricciardo soon followed the example of the Sauber driver.

Sutil's first lap is good for a 1:13.401, but immediately topped by Gutierrez and Ricciardo. In fact, the next few minutes showed that Sutil's lap was far from good, seeing everbody improve on the time.

Hamilton was the first Mercedes drivers to set a benchmark, completing the lap in 1:11.223, only to see Rosberg leap ahead by more than half a second in the next minute.

Alonso meanwhile is complaining to his race engineer about going into qualifying on empty batteries. It turned out that Alonso's Ferrari didn't get properly charged in the box, requiring him to first do a recharge lap, rather than going all out as one normally does.

Moments later, the Spaniard is passed on the straight by Pastor Maldonado. The Lotus driver dove into turn 1 on the inside of Alonso and subsequently locked his brakes and missed the corner, ruining his own lap at the same time.

2 minutes later however, Alonso set things straight by going third fastest. Maldonado didn't manage to do better than 13th on the next lap while Vettel only just came out on track, again aiming to limit mileage on his engine. When the latter finally managed to record a timed lap, it proved slowest of all as the German struggled with the charge settings of the ERS system.

In the closing stages, Hamilton closed in to Rosberg, reducing the deficit to 0.1s. Williams slotted into third and fourth yet again, followed by Hulkenberg and Magnussen. Late runs by the Sauber drivers also secured them of a place in Q2, eliminating Grosjean, Vergne, Perez and Maldonado.

In Q2 it's Nico Hulkenberg who first takes to the track. He completes a faultless lap, contrary to Sutil who ends up going through the grass in the final corner after catching oversteer. Alonso had a similar issue in turn 10, requiring him to abort his lap and attempt once more.

Halfway into the session, Mercedes tops the times, ahead of the Williams duo, followed by Ferrari. Along with Hulkenberg and Sutil, those are the only 8 cars that have run.

Another 3 minutes later, Sutil, Kvyat and Ricciardo still did not set a time and were waiting until the closing moments to get out on a seemingly improving track.

Nearly every driver went out for another run at the end of the session, apart from Mercedes. As a result, Massa and Bottas managed to record laps faster than Hamilton. Button settled for 5th, ahead of Vettel, Raikkonen, Ricicardo, Magnussen and Alonso.

Eliminated are Gutierrez, Hulkenberg, Sutil and Kvyat. Notably, this is the first time in Nico Hulkenberg's career that he fails to get into the top 10 in qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix.

In the final session, Mercedes didn't want to play the waiting game and went out with both cars quickly. Rosberg's first lap proved to be marginally faster than Hamilton's, with a gap of just 0.029s between the two. Williams' laps soon also proved brilliant, with Massa just 0.081s away from pole, and Bottas another 0.05s further back in fourth. The gap behind however is a comfortable 6 tenths to Button. Ferrari meanwhile opted to do only a single run, sitting out the session until Raikkonen left the pits with 4 minutes left on the clock.

The second attempts ended up in nothing for Williams, with both drivers unable to improve on their earlier laps. Hamilton though did improve to take provisional pole, only to see Rosberg take the advantage back, securing pole by just 0.033s.