Rosberg on uncontested Russian pole after Hamilton breakdown

Nico Rosberg has claimed his second consecutive pole position after Lewis Hamilton suffered another power unit problem that kept him in the garage.

Rosberg took the top spot completely unopposed at Russia’s Sochi street circuit around which the Mercedes car was peerless, and a mistake on his irrelevant second flying run only served to highlight that no driver was there to punish him for it.

The Mercedes power unit problem that prevented Hamilton from leaving his garage in Q3 — meaning the world champion will start from P10 on the grid — appeared to be identical to the one that restricted him from setting a time in qualifying in China two weeks ago.

With Rosberg as the chief beneficiary, the German is odds-on to extend his championship lead with another 25 points ahead of a hotchpotch grid.

“I was just focussed on myself out there, going for it and feeling great about it,” he said. “it just felt awesome.

“The others have been unfortunate today — extremely unfortunate — but that makes my race a little bit easier tomorrow.

“[But] even from where Sebastian is … the opposition is still there, so I need to keep focus and get the job done.”

Sebastian Vettel was all of seven-tenths slower than his compatriot on pole, but his Ferrari will take a five-place grid penalty for an unscheduled gearbox change on Friday after it was suspected to have taken damage in the Chinese Grand Prix.

“We benefitted from what happened to Lewis, which helps tomorrow for the penalty,” he said. “I think we can have a good race from there, which should be quite exciting.”

The German added that he was satisfied Ferrari had left nothing on the table.

“Of course I’d have liked the gap in the end to be a bit smaller, but I think in Q2 we saw that Nico in particular was very strong in getting the lap in. I think for us it was the maximum.”

Vettel will be usurped on the front row by Valtteri Bottas, who pipped the second Ferrari of Kimi Räikkönen by a tenth of a second in Williams’s most convincing showing of the season.

Bottas qualified third in 2015 before showing strongly in the race, and the team is hoping the power-sensitive nature and low drag-favouring nature of the track will continue to play into its hands on Sunday.

“Very good qualifying, really pleased with how it all went,” said the Finn. “This weekend has been very positive — we have some new bits in the car and the car has been feeling better.

“I’m glad we could maximise the qualifying today, but it’s tomorrow what counts, and so far my Sundays have not been great, but for sure we’ll have the chance to have a good one.”

Kimi Räikkönen qualified fourth, a little more than three-tenths of a second ahead of the second Williams of Felipe Massa.

Daniel Ricciardo put his Red Bull Racing RB12 in sixth with a nine-thousands buffer over Force India’s Sergio Perez, both of whom will be bumped up one place after Vettel takes his gearbox penalty.

Ricciardo’s teammate and home-crowd favourite Daniil Kvyat was three-tenths down on the sister car, but put a one-tenth buffer between himself and Max Verstappen to take eighth place.

QUALIFYING TWO

Four rounds into the season is still yet to sort out the competitive midfield, though Red Bull Racing’s renewed performance has made the fight to slip into Q3 more difficult for the smaller teams.

Red Bull Racing, around a power-sensitive circuit that disadvantaged the TAG Heuer-badged Renault power unit, had a fight on its hands with junior team Toro Rosso.

Max Verstappen put himself ahead of Daniel Ricciardo after the Australian’s right-hand mirror broke on his hot lap.

Daniil Kvyat put in a last-gasp lap to best Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz to P10 by half a tenth of a second.

Behind the Red Bull-backed cars Jenson Button threatened to put McLaren into the top ten, ultimately missing out by just a tenth of a second and finishing twelfth-fastest ahead of Force India’s Nico Hülkenberg, who was half a second off his Q3-bound teammate.

Fernando Alonso was a tenth off Button’s time in fourteenth, and half a two-tenths advantage over the distant Haas entries, led by Romain Grosjean in fifteenth, who shaded teammate Esteban Gutierrez.

QUALIFYING ONE

Whereas the midfield remains tight, the opening stanza of the season has sifted the least competitive cars out of Q2 contention for qualifying.

Renault has failed to put either car into Q2 since the Australian Grand Prix, the first round of F1’s short-lived elimination qualifying format, and has joined Manor and Sauber as the sport’s tail-end competitors.

The yellow cars had to beat its junior peers to preserve its dignity, while Manor started qualifying suspecting that it might be in with a sniff to best its low-budget rival Sauber.

Kevin Magnussen led Renault teammate Jolyon Palmer by a tenth of a second after the session’s 18 minutes, but Felipe Nasr’s Sauber was separated from the sister car driven by Marcus Ericsson by both Manor cars, with Pascal Wehrlein ahead of Rio Haryanto.

The quartet were separated by half a second, but Nasr, who took delivery of a new chassis in Sochi after three rounds of inexplicable handling problems, held almost four of those tenths over his rivals.