Silverstone, 29 June

No matter how you dress it up, having one car on the fifth row and the other on the sixth, is not going to help Scuderia Ferrari’s championship aspirations. Those are the hard facts at the end of this afternoon’s closely contested qualifying for tomorrow’s British Grand Prix. The reasons and it should be stressed that these are reasons not excuses, for this disappointing prelude to the eighth round of the World Championship can be attributed in part to the temperatures, which even by English summer standards, are very low and in Felipe’s case to a lack of track time after a crash on Friday and having to miss out on the end of FP3 because the engine needed changing on his F138.

A cold track that has seen plenty of rain in the past 48 hours is not an ideal scenario when it comes to providing grip, especially when the abrasive nature of the Silverstone track surface requires Pirelli to supply its Hard and Medium compound tyres. Clearly, of the front running teams, the Prancing Horse seemed to suffer most from this problem, despite the best efforts of the engineers and drivers who tried everything to resolve it, even going against perceived wisdom to see if the harder of the two tyres performed better. Unfortunately, the puzzle remained unsolved, which is why Fernando made it to Q3, but was only able to set the tenth fastest time. As for Felipe, his afternoon ended in Q2 and he will start directly behind his team-mate in twelfth place.


However, as the old adage goes, there are no points for qualifying and tomorrow it will be time for the Scuderia duo to play on their strengths, which means making a good start and hopefully dispensing with a few rivals on the opening lap, then making the most of the F138s excellent pace on a heavy fuel load, before finally counting on a well executed strategy and good pit stops. Realistically, tomorrow should be about damage limitation and bringing home as many points as possible with both cars.

The roar of the British crowd told you all you needed to know about pole position, as Lewis Hamilton secured the number one grid slot for his home race, with Nico Rosberg posting the second fastest time to ensure a Mercedes front row lock out. The second row is also shared among team mates, with Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber third and fourth for Red Bull. Another Brit is fifth in the shape of Paul di Resta and his Force India, with Daniel Ricciardo bringing his Toro Rosso across the line in sixth place. Fernando shares his row with Kimi Raikkonen in the Lotus, while Felipe has Jenson Button for company alongside him in eleventh.