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Nico Rosberg;
It was indeed a Super Saturday in Austin, Texas as Lewis Hamilton, Saturday, took his 58th career pole position – his first at the Circuit of the Americas and ninth of the 2016 season so far even as Nico Rosberg completed a 11th Silver Arrows front row lockout of the season in P2
Both drivers completed a single run in Q1 (SuperSoft), a single run in Q2 (soft) and two runs in Q3 (SuperSoft/SuperSoft)
Speaking on the feat, Lewis Hamilton said: “We’ve been working so hard and this is a really good reward for everyone at the team. I’m really pleased it all came together today so I could claim my first pole in the US. I’ve always been quite bad around the first corner, finding it hard to get the right line and losing time at this part of the track but today I finally got it right – and it was the right time to do so!
I feel strong this weekend and I’m just going to approach Sunday like any other race. We’ve done a lot of work to solidify our starts as well as our long run pace and I’m looking forward to getting back out there tomorrow.”
On his part, Nico Rosberg said: “I produced a good lap for my final run in Q3, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough as Lewis found some extra time in the first sector. As we’ve seen this year, it’s not always about where you qualify and I believe I still have a great chance at winning tomorrow’s race. I’ll try to catch Lewis as we head towards the first corner but it’s a track that provides plenty of opportunities if it doesn’t happen there. It would be fantastic to leave here on Sunday night with a first US Grand Prix win.”
Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport, Toto Wolff, commented: “It is fantastic to see both cars in the top two spots after a tricky day for us here in Austin. We had a messy FP3 session, failing to complete laps on the super soft tyre, and it looked from yesterday’s running like the gaps to Red Bull and Ferrari would be very close. But we put our heads down last night, worked through the problems we’d been having and it’s a positive surprise to see the gap back to Red Bull today.
“They have taken a bit of an advantage by splitting the tyre strategies on their cars, which is not something we want to do with our boys at this stage of the season, and that could make things harder for us tomorrow.”
Excited at the victory, Executive Director (Technical), Paddy Lowe, said: “Congratulations to Lewis on a fantastic pole position. Again, it was a very close competition with Nico throughout all of qualifying. We elected to take the soft tyre for the race start, finishing Q2 with two good laps on that compound.
“We came into Q3 and actually, from the first run, demonstrated some good pace compared to the Ferraris and Red Bulls but both drivers left some performance on the table. They were both able to improve second time out, especially Lewis, who produced an outstanding lap and improvement, particularly in sector one. We’re looking forward to putting on an exciting race tomorrow leading from the front row of the grid.”
