Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton will be starting on pole tomorrow at the 2018 Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix, ahead of Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel. However, it was the newly formed Racing Point Force India that was the true star of the qualifying session in the first race of the season after the summer break at Spa-Francorchamps circuit. Esteban Ocon will start at P3 in a big push for the new team, followed by teammate Sergio Perez qualifying at P4. Taking his fifth pole of the season, Hamilton surpassed Juan Manuel Fangio and Ayrton Senna’s qualifying records at the historic Belgian circuit.
Wet conditions during Q2 and Q3 ensured that the session wasn't an easy one, testing the skills of the top drivers. While the drivers ran Q1 and Q2 in slick tyres, the drivers had to pit during Q3 for intermediates as the rains intensified.
The qualifying session saw Kimi Raikkonen, Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel at the top with the German setting a time of 2m02.466s. Vettel further improved the time to 2m01.188s with just three minutes left. However, the final fliers is where all the action was present as Hamilton took the pole with a time of 1m58.179s, 0.726s ahead of Vettel. Ocon, meanwhile, finished with a time of 2m01.851s, while Perez made for an extremely close P4, 0.43s ahead of his teammate Perez. Haas driver Romain Grosjean and Raikkonen ended up finishing at P5 and P6 respectively, ahead of Red Bull Racing's Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo, who were running on low drag setups.
Haas' Kevin Magnussen will start at P9 tomorrow, while Valtteri Bottas qualified at P10 but will start at the back of the grid owing to a number of penalties. Pierre Gasly of Torro Rosso was the fastest to be eliminated in Q2 and will start 11th tomorrow, missing Bottas' time by just half a second. He will move up to P10 though owing to Bottas' penalities. Teammate Brendon Hartley will start at P12 after his rear brakes locked up at the first hairpin, triggering the yellow flag and prompted an investigation by the team for the reason of the incident.
Sauber's Charles Leclerc and Marcus Ericsson will start 13th and 14th respectively, ahead of Nico Hulkenberg qualifying at P15 but starts at the back thanks to grid penalties due to the whole engine change. Renault's Carlos Sainz will take P15 instead and ahead of McLaren driver Fernando Alonso along with teammate Stoffel Vandoorne with both drivers failing to improve their time during Q1. Vandoorne though starts 18th, behind Sergey Sirotkin and Lance Stroll of Williams.
