
Lewis Hamilton will start the 2018 Japanese Grand Prix from pole position after posting the fastest lap time during qualifying, a 1:27.760, with Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas making it a 1-2 for the team. Hamilton's World Championship rival, Sebastian Vettel, meanwhile, will start down in ninth place after a disastrous lap during the final lap of qualifying.
In the first part of qualifying (Q1), the five drivers who were eliminated were the following: Nico Hulkenberg, Sergey Sirotkin, McLaren drivers Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne respectively, and Marcus Ericsson, who crashed out, causing a red flag during Q1.
In Q2, the Mercedes drivers (Hamilton and Bottas) headed out on the soft tyres - which are the tyres they will be starting the race on tomorrow providing it is dry of course, whereas all the other cars headed out on the theoretically faster super-soft tyres. The Mercedes drivers however ended up first and second, ahead of even the Ferraris who were on the super-softs. Towards the end of Q2, it started to rain and this meant the track conditions got more slippery and no driver was able to improve on their initial lap-time. This severely hampered Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo, who suffered an engine issue during his initial run and was unable to set a time, and therefore this meant he was eliminated in Q2 and will start from 15th place on the grid.
At the start of Q3, the rain seemingly stopped. However, given the earlier rain, Ferrari decided to gamble on putting both their drivers, Kimi Raikkonen and Vettel, on the intermediate tyres, whereas the rest of the top 10 decided to go out on the slick tyres (super-softs). Ferrari, however, made a big mistake, and quickly had to call their drivers back into the pits to switch onto the slicks. Hamilton went fastest, with team-mate Bottas 3-tenths behind, whilst Verstappen set the third-fastest time. Kimi Raikkonen did manage to set the fourth best time, however, team-mate Vettel made a mistake in the middle sector which cost him significant time, and as a result he was all the way down in ninth place. The rain intensified towards the latter part of the session, and nobody was able to improve their laptimes, meaning that Hamilton took his 80th career pole position.
Starting grid:
Lewis Hamilton - Mercedes
Valtteri Bottas - Mercedes
Max Verstappen - Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer
Kimi Raikkonen - Ferrari
Romain Grosjean - Haas-Ferrari
Brendon Hartley - Scuderia Toro Rosso-Honda
Pierre Gasly - Scuderia Toro Rosso-Honda
Esteban Ocon - Racing Point Force India-Mercedes
Sebastian Vettel - Ferrari
Sergio Perez - Racing Point Force India-Mercedes
Charles Leclerc - Sauber-Ferrari
Kevin Magnussen - Haas-Ferrari
Carlos Sainz - Renault
Lance Stroll - Williams-Mercedes
Daniel Ricciardo - Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer
Nico Hulkenberg - Renault
Sergey Sirotkin - Williams-Mercedes
Fernando Alonso - McLaren-Renault
Stoffel Vandoorne - McLaren-Renault
Marcus Ericsson - Sauber-Ferrari