Russian Grand Prix 2015 qualifying: Nico Rosberg beats Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton to pole position

Valtteri Bottas third in Russia

(Getty Images)

Nico Rosberg gave himself a shot at redemption here yesterday afternoon. Once again the German beat his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton to pole position for the Russian GP, and he’s now focused on making sure that he doesn’t lock up his front wheels going into the first corner, flat-spot his tyres and throw it away – as he did last year.

“I haven’t thought about my start strategy yet, I’m just enjoying being on pole,” he said. “I’ll just work on the plan for that with my engineers tomorrow morning. I’ll look at last year’s start, and learn from that.”

Allaying fears – expressed by Mercedes’ executive chairman Niki Lauda – that the return of Pirelli’s supersoft tyres might provoke a repeat of the team’s shock defeat in Singapore, Rosberg and Hamilton were again in a class of their own in qualifying, leaving Williams’s Valtteri Bottas to upstage a weaker than expected challenge from the Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen.

Rosberg was fastest in Q1 and Q2, and once Raikkonen, Vettel and Bottas had succeeded one another as the pacesetters in Q3, he went back on top with a lap of 1m 37.113s. Hamilton’s initial response was 1m 37.433s. Rosberg then failed to improve, but just as Hamilton seemed about to, after two strong sectors, his car slid away from him, exiting Turn 13, settling the issue firmly in Rosberg’s favour for the third time this year.

The anti-climactic nature of the fight was in keeping with what has thus far been an odd weekend that has verged on the tragi-comic. Friday morning’s practice was cut by half an hour after it was discovered that a truck that had supposedly been cleaning the track the previous evening had, in fact, leaked diesel oil all over it, necessitating much endeavour with hoses and brooms.

Then, yesterday morning, the young Spaniard Carlos Sainz, son of the double world rally champion Carlos Sainz Snr, had the sort of accident that is areminder of the inherent dangers of racing cars.

Coming through the long left-handed approach to Turn 13, where cars reach 335kmh in eighth gear, Sainz lost control while braking hard for the second gear right-hander. His Toro Rosso oversteered left into the outer wall, smashing its front suspension, and thereafter the 21-year-old was a passenger all the way into and through the run-off area on the outside of the corner until his car buried itself beneath the Tec-pro barriers. It was one of those unpleasant moments in racing when everything goes quiet, the red flag flies and the television cameras look everywhere but where everyone desperately wants them to look. When you hold your breath and pray.

Thankfully, this time the news was good. Sainz was eventually removed from his car, whose survival cell was intact despite the heavy impact, and was stretchered, conscious and giving the thumbs up, to the medical centre. F1 could breathe again after the miraculous deliverance.

Subsequently, Sainz was flown to the hospital for the mandatory medical checks and scans, before his team pronounced him to be uninjured.

“After arriving at the Sochi Hospital 4, Carlos Sainz, who never lost consciousness, underwent a medical examination, including a full body scan,” a statement said. “The scan showed that the driver has no injuries. He will be staying in the hospital overnight as a precautionary measure, which is the normal procedure in these circumstances.”

Sainz said, via Twitter: “Everything OK! Nothing to worry about. Thinking about how to convince the doctors to let me run tomorrow!”

So long as Mercedes outscore Ferrari by three points this afternoon they will wrap up a second consecutive constructors’ world championship, but though Rosberg and Hamilton know how important that is to the German automotive giant both say it won’t affect their thinking. “Of course wrapping up the world championship for constructors will be a target for us,” Rosberg said. “But it changes nothing” – so it will be all-out war with his team-mate, whose lead he must reduce with four races remaining.

“I’m not saying I’m happy to be second but I had no choice, Nico did great job in qualifying,” Hamilton said. “But it’s all still to play for, which will make the race even more exciting. And it’s a long, long way down to T1, one of the longest runs in F1. That should create an opportunity, but there will be others as well. Whatever I did last year I plan to stick with, it seemed to work.”