Lewis Hamilton continued his domination of the Hungarian GP weekend as he romped to pole position in Budapest.
After topping every practice session, the world champion carried that form into Saturday afternoon as he took a major step towards a record breaking fifth win at the Hungaroring with a pole time of 1:22.020.
"I'm incredibly happy with how the weekend has gone. I can't remember when I have had a weekend like this," Hamilton said.
"I've always had really good experiences here. I love the track. It feels like an old go-karting track."
The session wasn’t as straightforward for team-mate and title rival Nico Rosberg, however, who continued to struggle to find a setup he liked, reporting understeer and generally questioning the aero balance throughout the session – problems he seemed to have carried over from Friday practice. He finished qualifying over half a second behind Hamilton, but did at least secure a front row start.
However, Mercedes executive director (technical) Paddy Lowe admits it may not all have been Rosberg’s fault.
“We need to apologise to Nico because on Friday there was a mistake in the configuration of the car which we didn’t discover until last night,” Lowe told Sky Sports F1.
“So he was struggling a bit yesterday. Today he was a lot better in P3 and at times today when they both ran the used set in Q3 they were similar. But Nico was having a lot of problems with front tyre pressure which probably explains some of the coming in and out of relative pace to Lewis.”
Sebastian Vettel was best of the rest in third, marginally faster than former team-mate Daniel Ricciardo. The Australian managed to save a set of soft tyres by running the mediums twice in Q1, which could put him in a position to challenge for a podium on Sunday having won here last year.
"It was so close, but I was happy with the lap," Ricciardo told Sky Sports F1. "The whole session went well, to get through Q1 on the prime, I think I was the only one to take that gamble, and if we two-stop tomorrow we have a new set of options for that which could be handy. Hopefully we can make good use of them."
Kimi Raikkonen completed the top five, but with speculation over his future mounting he once again failed to deliver when it mattered having been the quicker of the two Ferrari drivers throughout practice.
McLaren had hoped to be in Q3, but there was more disappointment as they saw both of their cars suffer reliability problems. Fernando Alonso resorted to pushing his car back to the pits after reporting a loss of power at the start of Q2 and stopping on track before he made it back to his garage.
At least he made Q2, though! Jenson Button was forced to take an early bath after ERS problems struck his car. “We didn’t get deployment on the pit straight,” he reported after his final lap wasn’t enough to get him out of the drop zone.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the session Button said: “Lap time other cars are quicker, but I think we got the best out of the car in qualifying – in terms of the balance of the car it felt good, but I didn’t have any [ERS] deployment all the way down the straight so it’s quite a lot of power – over three-tenths of lap time – and it’s a massive amount before you’ve even arrived in Turn One.
“We’re just looking at it. We’ve never seen anything like it before. Just unlucky I guess.”
Worryingly for McLaren Ron Dennis told Sky F1 that the problems were unrelated and the team have a lot of investigation work to do overnight ahead of Sunday’s grand prix.
After taking the fight to Mercedes at Silverstone, Williams found life difficult on the tight, twists of the Hungaroring, but not to the same extent as they had in Monaco. The team to appear to only be the forth quickest, though, behind Ferrari and Red Bull, but Valtteri Bottas edging out Daniil Kvyat for sixth will at least be a slight bonus.
"I don't think this is a Williams track," said Damon Hill. "Their issue is they have a very good car on a slippery circuit and I think they will be right back there when they get to Spa. I just don't think they have the downforce for this track."
Hungarian GP qualifying
Q3
1) Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, 1:22.020;
2) Nico Rosberg, Mercedes, 1:22.595;
3) Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari, 1:22.739;
4) Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull, 1:22.774;
5) Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, 1:23.020;
6) Valtteri Bottas, Williams, 1:23.222;
7) Daniil Kvyat, Red Bull, 1:23.332;
8) Felipe Massa, Williams, 1:23.537;
9) Max Verstappen, Toro Rosso, 1:23.679;
10) Romain Grosjean, Lotus, 1:24.181.
Q2
11) Nico Hulkenberg, Force India, 1:23.805;
12) Carlos Sainz, Toro Rosso, 1:23.869;
13) Sergio Perez, Force India, 1:24.461;
14) Pastor Maldonado, Lotus, 1:24.609;
15) Fernando Alonso, McLaren, No time.
Q1
16) Jenson Button, McLaren, 1:24.739;
17) Marcus Ericsson, Sauber, 1:24.843;
18) Felipe Nasr, Sauber, 1:24.997;
19) Roberto Merhi, Manor Marussia, 1:27.416;
20) Will Stevens, Manor Marussia, 1:27.949.