Motor racing: Hamilton powers to majestic Belgian pole as Ferrari struggle

SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS - Lewis Hamilton delivered two successive record breaking qualifying laps to claim his sixth Belgian Grand Prix pole position and a record-increasing 93rd of his career with a flawless demonstration of speed on Saturday (Aug 29).

The championship leader and six-time champion clocked a best lap in one minute and 41.252 seconds in the final seconds of a session that he dominated in a personal tribute to the Hollywood film actor Chadwick Boseman, who died on Friday.

His Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas was second, to complete another 'black arrows' front row of the grid, but he was more than half a second adrift of Hamilton's pace.

It was Hamilton's fifth pole in seven races this year, a feat he said he had wanted to achieve in memory of Boseman whose life had been an inspiration to Hamilton.

"Today was a very, very clean session for me and the end of the lap was getting better and better. We did such a lot of work for this in the background.

"This is a really important pole for me because I woke up to the saddest news of Chadwick passing away... It has been such a heavy year for all of us so it rocked me. I wanted to go out there and drive to perfection because of what he has done for our people and how he has shown young kids what is possible."

After winning last year's race, Charles Leclerc and his Ferrari team-mate four-time champion Sebastian Vettel were eliminated during Q2 and will start Sunday's race from 13th and 14th positions..

Team boss Mattia Binotto had warned on Friday that Ferrari faced a host of issues as they battled to find performance at the long, demanding and high-speed Spa-Francorchamps circuit.

The team have struggled this year with a power deficit to their rivals, but Binotto said it was not only this deficiency that hampered their speed, but also a struggle to warm up their tyres and find balance.

"We struggle to make the tyres work," said Binotto. "We are lacking grip, both in braking and acceleration. There is no overall performance to the car. So certainly the drivers are complaining about grip, overall grip.

"I think it's the same situation on both cars so it's not driver related. It's really the way we set up the car in order to find the right window on the tyres."

He added that it was a difficult challenge for the team to solve as they sought a well-balanced aerodynamic set-up for a track that always demands a precise level of down-force.

Three-quarters of the lap is driven at top speed, requiring minimum down-force, while the other quarter requires more down-force to cope with slower sections with corners.

Meanwhile, Alfa Romeo team boss Frederic Vasseur suggested Saturday that he is set to give Mick Schumacher a test with the team in order to evaluate his potential as a Formula One driver next year.

Vasseur said the F2 racer and son of seven-time champion Michael Schumacher was racing impressively this season and was one of five or six drivers in contention for the F2 title and a possible seat in F1.

"I believe he will have the opportunity to test a Formula One car before the end of this season," Vasseur told Sky Deutschland. "We will see as there are still six races in his championship and he is in contention for the title."

Schumacher, 21, is a member of the Ferrari driver academy, which has close links with Alfa Romeo.