Hamilton takes pole position for Emilia Romagna GP

Lewis Hamilton won his first pole position this season after tense qualifying session for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and Sergio Perez was slower by just 0.035 seconds and finished ahead of teammate Max Verstappen.

Hamilton was the fastest after the first Q3 attempts, 0.091 ahead of Verstappen, and Perez was third ahead of Norris, Leclerc and Bottas.

But Perez got very close to Hamilton in the second lap and overtook Verstappen while Norris had his lap deleted with the two fastest sectors with which he had second place behind Hamilton.

Hamilton, Perez and Verstappen are followed by Leclerc in Ferrari, Gasly in AlphaTauri and McLaren drivers Ricciardo and Norris while Bottas was only eighth in second Mercedes ahead of Ocon and Stroll.

Sainz was only 11th behind Ferrari ahead of Russell at Williams and Vettel at Aston Martin who were again slower than Stroll, and Latifi at second Williams was faster than Alonso at Alpine.

For Hamilton, this was his first pole position since the 2020 Bahrain GP and 99th in his F1 career.

In the first part of the qualifying, Tsunoda lost control of his AlphaTauri AT02 over the curb in the Variante Alta chicane, crashed with his rear end into the wall and severely damaged his car, which ended his qualifying performance after only six minutes.

This caused a red flag, and the time until the end of Q1 stood at 12 minutes and one second before the stewards removed his badly damaged AlphaTauri AT02.

Practice resumed after eight minutes, at a time when only five drivers had set their times, and drivers hurried to the track on soft tyres to set their first times as soon as possible.

Bottas was fastest in Q1 with a time of 1:14.672, 0.283 seconds ahead of Hamilton and 0.337 seconds ahead of Norris while Verstappen was fourth for Red Bull with 0.437 seconds behind.

Apart from Tsunoda, Alfa Romeo drivers Raikkonen and Giovinazzi and drivers Haasa Schumacher and Mazepin got stuck in Q1, while for the first time since the 2020 Hungarian GP, ​​both Williams drivers passed in Q2.

Perez was the fastest in Q2 ahead of Norris, Leclerc, Hamilton, Verstappen, Bottas, Gasly, Ricciardo, Ocon and Stroll until Sainz, Russell, Vettel, Latifi and Alonso advanced to the final of qualifying.

Only drivers of Mercedes Hamilton and Bottas and Verstappen in Red Bull managed to pass in Q3 on medium tires on which they will start tomorrow’s race, while drivers outside the top ten will have the freedom to choose the tyre compound.

The race is scheduled at 15:oo local time.

2021 EMILIA ROMAGNA GP STARTING GRID