Mercedes dominate qualifying, Hamilton takes pole and lap record

F1 Grand Prix, GP Great-Britain, Silverstone Circuit

Lewis Hamilton took yet another pole position, despite a few difficult moments early on in qualifying. The World Champion took another lap record at Silverstone, and with Bottas second, Mercedes underlined their dominance in this unfolding Formula One season.

Q1 kicked off with Haas and Alfa Romeo as the first teams to take to the track. Early times were fairly slow, with Magnussen topping the early runners with a 1m 27.814s. With that, he ended up half a second ahead of his team mate.

Gusts of wind seemed to hamper several drivers, with Norris among the first to get surprised and end up wide at Luffied. Latifi later suffered the same fate and spun off. Luckily for the Williams driver, he avoided the gravel and managed to keep going. He would still end up slowest in today's qualifying.

Though Verstappen initially split the Mercedes cars after a poor early lap from Hamilton, it soon changed, revealing a quite comfortable advantage of the Mercedes drivers over the rest of the field.

Q2 was more of the same, at least at the front, where Bottas set the fastest time, three tenths ahead of Hamilton and more than a full second faster than third-placed Verstappen. Both McLarens positioned themselves well into Q3, along with both Renault and both Ferrari drivers. Lance Stroll also made it through, but only just.

This meant Albon, on the back foot since his crash in FP2, failed to make it through, along with Hulkenberg and the AlphaTauri duo. George Russell ended up in 15th, once again a solid performance for the Williams driver.

All this materialised in a shortened Q2 session as Hamilton found himself spinning off at Luffield, causing a temporary stoppage of the session at a time when there were about 9 minutes left on the clock.

Q3 saw Hamilton shoot to the top of the timesheets with his first lap, and he would stick with it, thanks to another improvement on the second outing. Valtteri Bottas was a close challenger throughout this qualifying, but in Q3, he was 3 tenths short.

The last-minute laps were especially interesting as times tumbled, but nobody could really threaten the Mercedes. Charles Leclerc looked set for third place on the grid until Verstappen found another two tenths to snatch that away from the Ferrari driver.

Lando Norris was 5th fastest to secure a strong starting position for his home Grand Prix, followed by Stroll, Sainz, the Renault duo and Sebastian Vettel who ended up 10th, about a full second slower than his Ferrari teammate.