Lewis can't even give pole away!

Hamilton is such a trendsetter,  he goes off on his final qualifying lap and Rosberg copies!

Lewis apparently can't even give the pole away this year.  Rosberg was right there, purple  up to the final turn complex and he goes off.



Anyone saying current F1 cars are easy to drive will have to re-evaluate because in the tricky conditions at the deceptively simple Red Bull Ring, everyone made mistakes.

The trick there is to carry big speed into the the tight, uphill approached corners while not overdriving the downhill off camber one.   Very tricky.



Mercedes are still 3/10th ahead of Ferrari in qualifying but race pace analysis from yesterday suggests the Silver cars will be under pressure.  There's at least a 50% chance of rain for Sunday so,  as they say, pass the popcorn.

The German ¨berteam will only have to worry about one red cars in their mirrors after Raikkonen failed to get out of Q1.

Raikkonen has said he thought he had another lap but that does not really jibe with him being in the pits with less than a minute to go in Q1 at times were dropping like flies.    There's obviously a communication issue there.   For sure, this second questionable episode in as many races will give ammunition to those who would like to see the Finn replaced at Ferrari.

"It was a shit Saturday so...mumble mumble mumble" said Kimi when asked what he expects for the race.  Because of the almost comical amount of grid penalties handed out this week end, Raikkonen will start from he outside of row7 despite qualifying `18th.

Auditioning for Kimi's seat will be Nico "Le Mans Winner" Hulkenberg  who dragged the Mercedes powered Force india to row 3, splitting the Williams of Massa and Bottas.

Both the Red Bull cars will get a 10 grid penalty for having too many Renault go poof but that's nothing compared to the sublimely ridiculous 25 grid spot (in a 20 car field, mind you) penalty both McLaren Hondas were hit with.

I'm not sure if F1 itself has figured out how Button and Alonso will have to serve that one,  they are too busy chasing hares at the moment.

Pos	Driver	Car	Time	Gap
1	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1m08.455s	-
2	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1m08.655s	0.200s
3	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1m08.810s	0.355s
4	Felipe Massa	Williams/Mercedes	1m09.192s	0.737s
5	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India/Mercedes	1m09.278s	0.823s
6	Valtteri Bottas	Williams/Mercedes	1m09.319s	0.864s
7	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso/Renault	1m09.612s	1.157s
8	Felipe Nasr	Sauber/Ferrari	1m09.713s	1.258s
9	Romain Grosjean	Lotus/Mercedes	-	-
10	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus/Mercedes	1m10.374s	-
11	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber/Ferrari	1m10.426s	-
12	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso/Renault	1m10.465s	-
13	Sergio Perez	Force India/Mercedes	1m12.522s	-
14	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1m12.867s	-
15	Roberto Merhi	Marussia/Ferrari	1m14.071s	-
16	Will Stevens	Marussia/Ferrari	1m15.368s	-
17	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull/Renault	1m09.694s	-
18	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull/Renault	1m10.482s	-
19	Fernando Alonso	McLaren/Honda	1m10.736s	-
20	Jenson Button	McLaren/Honda	1m12.632s	-