Lewis Hamilton claimed British Grand Prix pole position for the Mercedes Formula 1 team, despite having a time deleted for a track limits offence in Q3.

The reigning F1 world champion was almost three tenths of a second faster than team-mate Nico Rosberg after their first runs in Q3 at Silverstone, but had his provisional pole lap scrubbed for running wide at Copse, after officials promised a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to track limits transgressions ahead of the session.

Hamilton bounced back on his final run, going another half a tenth faster to grab pole for his home grand prix, again just over three tenths clear of Rosberg.

Red Bull locked out the second row of the grid, with Max Verstappen outqualifying team-mate Daniel Ricciardo for the first time, by 0.305s.

Ferrari was next up, Kimi Raikkonen well clear of Sebastian Vettel. The German survived a massive slide at Stowe on his best lap in Q3, but will fall back to 11th when a gearbox-change penalty is applied.

Vettel’s lap was still enough to leave him 0.067s clear of the Williams of Valtteri Bottas, while Fernando Alonso put his McLaren-Honda eighth fastest before his best time was deleted for running off track at Stowe.

Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg also had his best time deleted (for running wide at Copse) after the session ended, so Carlos Sainz Jr claimed eighth place for Toro Rosso. Hulkenberg was demoted to ninth, Alonso 10th.

Sergio Perez narrowly missed the top-10 cut-off after a flurry of late improvements in Q2.

He trailed Force India team-mate Hulkenberg by just over a tenth.

Felipe Massa ended up a disappointing 12th in the second Williams, just ahead of Haas pair Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez, and the second Toro Rosso of Daniil Kvyat.

Both Grosjean and Kvyat failed to improve during their second runs in Q2, with Kvyat complaining of being blocked by Kevin Magnussen’s Renault.

Magnussen put Renault into Q2 for the first time since May’s Spanish GP, despite having a time deleted for a track limits offence in Q1.

Magnussen’s 16th place on the grid came at the expense of McLaren-Honda’s Jenson Button, who failed to escape Q1 after deciding not to do a second run.

Button’s first run was over half a second slower than team-mate Alonso, and left him only a few tenths clear of the drop zone.

Late improvements from Kvyat and Magnussen (who pipped Button by just 0.059s) meant the British driver wound up only 17th fastest in a car that should have been comfortably good enough for Q2.

Jolyon Palmer was the fastest Renault driver after the first runs in Q1 (despite both having times deleted for track limits offences), but failed to improve on his second run so ended up 18th.

Rio Haryanto pipped Manor team-mate Pascal Wehrlein to the 19th fastest time, while Sauber will bring up the rear of the grid.

Felipe Nasr was slowest of the runners and Marcus Ericsson failed to participate in qualifying after crashing heavily in final practice and going to hospital for precautionary checks.

PROVISIONAL GRID

Hamilton takes popular home pole for British Grand Prix