Hamilton Grabs Pole Position for Korean Grand Prix

by Adam Milleneuve on Oct 15th, 2011

For the first time this season we don't have a Red Bull Racing driver on pole position with Sebastian Vettel 2nd Mark Webber down in 4th. Lewis Hamilton pulled out a fantastic final lap late in the session, just 0.2s quicker than the newly-crowned champion.

He may have grabbed pole position, but when getting out of his car and heading through parc ferme, he seemed to be hiding his true emotion, with no cheers or celebration and a massively subdued press conference - for more on that see here.  Maybe it was just to wind up the journalists who will suddenly say he's great again after suggesting he'd lost lost it just last week - who knows. We're sure we'll see him celebrating if he can turn the pole into a victory though.

Lewis on form in Korea, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was a scale model! @copy; sutton-images.com

Other than the non-Red Bull pole, Michael Schumacher was knocked out in the second round of qualifying, Rubens Barrrichello was knocked out in the first round and Daniel Ricciardo didn't set a time due to issues with his Hispania Racing car.

Here's the grid for Sunday:

		Lewis Hamilton
Row 1		McLaren		Sebastian Vettel
		1'35.820		Red Bull
				1'36.042
		Jenson Button
Row 2		McLaren		Mark Webber
		1'36.126		Red Bull
				1'36.468
		Felipe Massa
Row 3		Ferrari		Fernando Alonso
		1'36.831		Ferrari
				1'36.980
		Nico Rosberg
Row 4		Mercedes		Vitaly Petrov
		1'37.754		Renault
				1'38.124
		Paul Di Resta
Row 5		Force India		Adrian Sutil
		-		Force India
				-
		J.Alguersuari
Row 6		Toro Rosso		M.Schumacher
		1'38.315		Mercedes
				1'38.354
		Sebastien Buemi
Row 7		Toro Rosso		Kamui Kobayashi
		1'38.508		Sauber
				1'38.775
		Bruno Senna
Row 8		Renault		Pastor Maldonado
		1'38.791		Williams
				1'39.189
		Sergio Perez
Row 9		Sauber		R.Barrichello
		1'39.443		Williams
				1'39.538
		H.Kovalainen
Row 10		Lotus		J.Trulli
		1'40.522		Lotus
				1'41.101
		Timo Glock
Row 11		Virgin		J.D'Ambrosio
		1'42.091		Virgin
				1'43.483
		Vitantonio Liuzzi
Row 12		HRT	[no pic]	Daniel Ricciardo
		1'43.758		HRT
				NO TIME