British GP: Bridgestone Saturday qualifying notes

McLaren Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton has wowed his home crowds with a scintillating pole position lap on Bridgestone's medium compound Potenza at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix.

The grey skies of Friday gave way to blue skies on Saturday and the lap times on both Bridgestone's hard and medium Potenzas continued to fall. Hamilton's pole lap of 1min 19.997secs, set in the dying seconds of the final qualifying session, was over two tenths faster than last year's pole.

Kimi Raikkonen will start tomorrow's 60 lap race on the front row alongside Hamilton. The Ferrari driver was quickest in the morning practice session, with a time of 1min 19.751secs set on the hard compound Potenza. Starting from third place on the grid tomorrow will be Fernando Alonso, who set the day's fastest lap with a 1min 19.152secs in Q2, also on the hard compound.

With less cloud and wind than yesterday, teams were able to undertake more meaningful running on the hard and medium compound Bridgestone Potenzas in the morning practice session. The hard compound Bridgestone Potenza should offer a more consistent performance than the medium compound in tomorrow's race, but the close lap times between the two should mean stint length variations between pit stops.

Kees van de Grint, Bridgestone Motorsport Head of Track Engineering Operations:

"This was an exciting qualifying session, with a close fought battle between four drivers for pole. The weather was good today, and the home crowd was able to cheer a British pole winner at the home of British motorsport. Tyre performance was good, with a slight track improvement meaning there was less graining. Both compounds of Bridgestone Potenza had an advantage in a particular sector, but overall there was very little to choose between the two on lap time."

"Pole position was set by Lewis Hamilton on the medium compound, but today's fastest lap was set by Fernando Alonso on the hard compound. This lap was over a second quicker than last year's fastest, and pole was faster than last year too, showing that we have two high performance racing tyres here this weekend."

Stats of the Day
Total amount of laps completed by all drivers: 738 laps
Average number of laps per car: 34 laps
Most laps by a driver: 44 laps - Ralf Schumacher
Fastest lap: 1m 19.152s - Alonso in Q2
Compounds: Hard and medium

-credit: bridgestone