Nico Rosberg won his fourth pole of the season on Sunday, a few hours before the United States Grand Prix, and his third pole in three race weekends. He will start ahead of his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton, and they will be followed by Daniel Ricciardo, Daniil Kvyat, Sebastian Vettel and Sergio Pérez.
But on another very wet day at the Circuit of the Americas the third qualifying session of the morning was cancelled, so grid decisions were decided by Q2. Qualifying had already been carried over from Saturday because of the atrocious conditions.
Hamilton, who will win his third world title if he beats Sebastian Vettel by nine points and Rosberg by two, won his two previous races here, in 2012 and 2014, when he started from second place.
He said afterwards: “It’s going to be hard out there today. But there are four races left so it is not do or die this weekend.”
He added: “It was lots of fun out there for all of us. It’s a shame we couldn’t go out at the end. I had hoped we could go out and clean the track. It looks like a lot of people have turned up today to watch. I hope the weather eases up for the race.”
Rosberg said: “I felt comfortable with the car. It is quite challenging – the car snaps quite suddenly, but I got a good lap together.”
Hamilton set the early pace in Q1, when he was the only driver to clock under two minutes in the early runs. But in Q2, like a number of other drivers, he had problems with the very wet Turn 10, and his car performed a 360 degrees spin.
Q2 ended in awful conditions and it was no surprise when, 12 minutes after that, it was announced that Q3 would not take place. Towards the end of Q2 Vettel said: “These are red flag conditions.” Max Verstappen described the track as useless while Jenson Button said: “I can’t touch any of the wet areas. It’s immediate aquaplaning. They shouldn’t be running in these conditions.” Neither Button nor his McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso qualified for Q3.
But despite the awful weather there was only one crash, when Carlos Sainz Sr lost control at Turn Four and went into the barrier in Q1.
