Hamilton at Home with British Grand Prix Pole

Photo Credit: FOTO STUDIO COLOMBO X PIRELLI

The 2015 Formula 1 season is approaching its halfway point as the tour makes its significant stop at the Silverstone Circuit for the British Grand Prix. After eight completed races in 2015, the Mercedes AMG race team cars has continued to their dominance of 2014. A home race for Mercedes AMG driver and reigning Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton, this year's British round is a race he would desperately want to repeat winning.

For Sunday, Hamilton will defend his 2014 British Grand Prix win from the pole position. Achieving a Q3 lap time of 1-minute, 32.248 seconds, the Brit edged his teammate by a narrow 0.113-second margin. The 2015 British Grand Prix is the fifth race in a row where the Mercedes AMG team cars own the front row. In the past two British Grand Prix events, the Silverstone Circuit has been extremely kind to the Mercedes AMG team. Nico Rosberg won the 2013 with the team and Lewis Hamilton won last year's round.

Williams Martini Racing has endured a shaky 2015 season entering Silverstone. In Austria, a podium achieved by Felipe Massa has been a breath of fresh air for the race team. With the British Grand Prix serving as a home race for the Williams organization, both drivers came through in qualifying. Felipe Massa will start third in a second row joined by teammate Valtteri Bottas.

After elements of drama in qualifying for the last round in Austria, time trials at Silverstone also provided some additional climatic moments. Qualifying Saturday on the 5.891-kilometer course took place in tricky to predict track conditions. After overnight rains, the weather conditions during the Friday practice session was greatly altered for Saturday. A cooler track and heavily winds proved challenging for teams setting up their cars for qualifying.

Besides the change in weather, the time trials for the British Grand Prix saw several drivers lose their lap times when they incurred track limit penalties when running wide at Silverstone's Copse corner. In Q2, Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen was one of the drivers hit with an infraction. Barely crossing into Q3, Raikkonen was able to salvage qualifying with an impressive fifth place performance. In a rare feat, Raikkonen will start ahead of Sebastian Vettel who occupies the sixth place spot resulting in an all-Ferrari third row.

Tomorrow's race at Silverstone will take place at 8am eastern time.

2015 Formula 1

British Grand Prix

Starting Grid

Pos #	Car #	Driver	Team	Engine
1	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes AMG	Mercedes-Benz
2	6	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes AMG	Mercedes-Benz
3	19	Felipe Massa	Williams	Mercedes-Benz
4	77	Valtteri Bottas	Williams F1	Renault
5	7	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	Ferrari
6	5	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	Ferrari
7	26	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	Renault
8	55	Carlos Sainz Jr	Scuderia Toro Rosso	Renault
9	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	Mercedes-Benz
10	3	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	Renault
11	11	Sergio Perez	Force India	Mercedes-Benz
12	8	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	Mercedes-Benz
13	33	Max Verstappen	Scuderia Toro Rosso	Renault
14	13	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus	Mercedes-Benz
15	9	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	Ferrari
16	12	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	Ferrari
17	14	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	Honda
18	22	Jenson Button	McLaren	Honda
19	28	Will Stevens	Manor Marussia	Ferrari
20	98	Roberto Merhi	Manor Marussia	Ferrari