McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton will start on pole position for Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix after taking first place from Williams driver Pastor Maldonado with a last-gasp surge Saturday.
Hamilton set a time of 1 minute 21.707 seconds with the last lap of the day to seal his 22nd career pole, 0.578 seconds ahead of the Venezuelan, and dominate a qualifying session that saw surprises from lesser-known drivers such as Maldonado while several famous names struggled.
Hamilton’s teammate Jenson Button found himself edged out of the top ten in the second session and will start 11th, while reigning champions Sebastian Vettel sits eighth in the first Red Bull, with his teammate Mark Webber 12th.
Fernando Alonso will start third for Ferrari, ahead of Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen for Lotus in fourth and fifth. Sergio Perez took sixth for Sauber with a time of 1 minute 22.533 seconds as second and sixth were separated by 0.248 seconds.
Seventh goes to Mercedes’ Chinese Grand Prix winner Nico Rosberg, the last driver to set a time in the top ten shootout as some teams opted not to set a time in order to conserve tires.
Behind the eighth-placed Vettel, Rosberg’s teammate Michael Schumacher and Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi round out the top ten.
Alongside Button and Mark Webber, another casualty of the second session was Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, who will start 17th.
Russian Formula One driver Vitaly Petrov qualified ahead of his Caterham teammate Heikki Kovalainen for the first time this season, not counting grid penalties, in Spain on Saturday.
Petrov will start 19th for Sunday’s race at the Circuit de Catalunya after setting a time of 1 minute 25.277 seconds, 0.230 seconds faster than Kovalainen, although 1.391 seconds off the time needed to reach the second session.
The Russian set the time with his last lap of the windy first session, just seconds after his Finnish teammate beat his earlier mark to put Petrov’s 19th place under threat.
The Russian-owned Marussia team’s cars will start 21st and 22nd, ahead of only the HRT cars, with Frenchman Charles pic leading his more experienced teammate Timo Glock.
