Hamilton on pole for revived McLaren

Lewis Hamilton stayed focused on the job that lies ahead after sweeping to a dominant pole position for a revived McLaren team in Saturday's closely-fought qualifying session for Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix.

Driving with supreme speed and consistency, the 27-year-old Briton clocked a best time of one minute and 20.953 seconds to top the times ahead of nearest rival Romain Grosjean in a Lotus.

"That was a really good session and I would have been disappointed not to have taken pole," said Hamilton.

"But we will have a lot to do before we have done the job."

France's Grosjean secured his first front row start with a fast lap in the final seconds of a tight session to move ahead of third-placed defending drivers champion Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull and Hamilton's team-mate Jenson Button.

Finn Kimi Raikkonen was fifth in the second Lotus ahead of championship leader Spaniard Fernando Alonso and his Ferrari team-mate Brazilian Felipe Massa.

Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado was eighth ahead of his Williams team-mate Brazilian Bruno Senna and German Nico Hulkenberg in the leading Force India.

For Hamilton, it was a third pole of the year and the 22nd of his career -- and the 150th pole secured by the McLaren team.

"There is no real secret (to Sunday's race), it is the same as anyone else," Hamilton said.

"You have to keep your head cool and make sure you look after your tyres. Tyre strategy will be important tomorrow, and degradation will be interesting."

He continued: "Jenson showed our upgrades are an improvement and hopefully I can show the same thing tomorrow. We have a long race tomorrow so lots can happen, but we need to keep cool."

He added that the team's recent upgrades allowed him to push harder than he has been able to in recent grands prix, 'empowering' him throughout qualifying.

"It has been a really positive weekend so far, we can finally see the upgrades working this weekend, being able to put car in places I previously wasn't able to," said Hamilton.

"I am always striving for the perfect lap, and to get that is intense and exciting and if you get it right it is incredibly empowering.

"This weekend we have obviously had pace, we knew it was possible, but it was just a case of doing it. Considering we have had pace all weekend, missing pole would have been disappointing, so I am happy I have done it.

"This is motor racing. We are not saying we are relaxed about it, we know we have a lot of work to do. We must make sure we start that work this weekend.

"Starting from the front row is special. We know overtaking is difficult so the first job is done. Hopefully tomorrow we will keep our race pace and be able to save our tyres as much as we want and get some good battles with the guy at the front."

Vettel said that it was not his new engine map, as required by the FIA, but a poor balance from his Red Bull RB8 that had been the key factor in his performance.

"I don't think the engine map really affected us as much as people think," the German said.

"We were struggling a little to find the balance through the weekend but it has nothing to do with the mapping.

"We seem to have lost a little something compared to yesterday, so we've come into qualifying and failed to improve session-by-session."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hamilton-f1-pole-revived-mclaren-142348637--nascar.html

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