Hamilton Pulls A Senna. Puts Nearly Half A Second Between His Pole Lap Time And Rosberg.

by Gregson Mathe 3 September, 2016, 11:18 am 453 Views

Ayrton Senna was arguably the best F1 driver of all time and his legend needs no introduction. But for those of you that do not remember, Senna was famous for taking the pole position by massive gaps in F1 terms. He was on pole in Monaco one year 1.5 seconds ahead of Alain Prost, which equates to an eternity especially at Monaco.

Monza in Italy is a very difficult track to cut time off due to it’s high speed corners and long straights. It’s not a precision track more than it’s a brute force acceleration and braking track. The antithesis of Monaco. So gaining time through sheer bravery and maddening speed is how you’re going to be fast there, not through precision.

Well it looks like Hamilton figured it out this weekend as he just blitzed the entire field and put a 0.478s gap between him and his own teammate Nico Rosberg.

According to Motorsport.com:

Rosberg set the benchmark in Q3 with a lap of 1m21.646s, but suffered a scruffy exit of the Roggia chicane, which meant Hamilton was well clear with his 1m21.358s opener.

Hamilton then improved his pole time to 1m21.135s, with Rosberg only making a tiny gain to 1m21.613s, which was 0.478s clear.

Raikkonen was third after the first runs, ahead of Vettel by almost three tenths, with Valtteri Bottas fifth for Williams ahead of Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo, who was a tenth up on teammate Max Verstappen.

With the cars of today being closer than ever, especially in the Mercedes team, this is an incredibly impressive feat. Of course this all means nothing when the race starts, but being that far ahead at the end of qualifying holds big time potential for a race that has seen it’s share of massive shunts on the opening lap. Here’s what happened back in 2000.