Patronise F1

It wasn't a particularly surprising pole position. The level of dominance that McLaren, and Hamilton in particular, now seem to exert over the rest of the F1 pack is beginning to border on the boring. Despite Ferrari's protestations that they are making progress, and the hope they may have had after Felipe Massa's practice form, the Italian team were never really in the hunt here, with Kimi Raikkonen in particular looking lost on setup.

Hamilton grabbed a comfortable pole, his fastest time at the end of the final session achieving little other than to just push him further clear of his team mate Heikki Kovalainen, who will line up second, and who held off Massa, who was left with third place. Massa will, somewhat surprisingly, find himself alongside Robert Kubica on row two, as the Pole produced a brilliant lap towards the end to temporarily go 2nd, and end the session 4th, after having looked lost for most of the afternoon.

If he found a lap at the crucial moment, Kimi Raikkonen certainly didn't. After his strangely lacklustre weekend in Germany, Kimi once again never really seemed to get to grips with the Hungaroring track, messing around with different tyre compounds and setups, and getting out early in the second session to allow for more running time, But nothing really worked, and he limped to sixth place, with everything to do tomorrow.

The star performer of the day was undoubtably Timo Glock, the Toyota man putting in his first really decent showing of the season, spending much of the final session in second place, before falling down to 5th as the big boys finally got their acts together later in the session. Still, his best qualifying effort in F1 to date, and he ended up putting his team mate and supposed qualifying specialist Jarno Trulli to shame, Trulli ending in 9th.

The other top ten runners were the pair of Renaults, Fernando Alonso grabbing 7th, with team mate Nelson Piquet struggling to 10th, despite showing flashes of pace on the softer tyres throughout practice, and Mark Webber for Red Bull, making the top ten shoot out once again, but never really looking capable of puling off any sort of unlikely surprise. The Australian starts 8th, and Red Bull will have their work cut out to stay within touching distance of nearest rivals Toyota and Renault.

Earlier in the session, the second session had been a quiet affair, the mad dash for the final session eased sightly by the loss of Nico Rosberg's Williams through hydraulic failure at the start of the 15 minutes, leaving the German down in 15th. The Toro Rossos of Sebastian Vettel and Sebastien Bourdais fell at this stage, despite Vettel making a late decent lap, with Jenson Button and David Coulthard the others to go. Button took his only win to date at this track from 14th, but he'd need some monumental luck to do much from 12th tomorrow, even if it was a decent effort to get the Honda so high up.

In the opening session, the big loss was Nick Heidfeld's BMW, the German angry at apparently getting blocked on his final run by Bourdais in the Toro Rosso. The stewards agreed with his statement, and Bourdais, despite making Q2, will be penalised five places on the grid tomorrow. Not as that helps Heidfeld much, who will have a dire afternoon ahead of him. Also out at the first hurdle was the paceless Rubens Barrichello, the second Williams of Kazuki Nakajima, who had a minor blocking incident of his own with Fernando Alonso, and the Force India pair.

All in all then, things couldn't be set up better for Hamilton. He leads the championship, will start from pole with (despite Ron Dennis's assertions after the session) an effective patsy of a team mate alongside, and with his title rivals still bereft of pace, should be looking to make a not inconsiderable amount of hay tomorrow.

The chances of excitement are slim, but McLaren won't mind that.

* - Eliminated in second session
** - Eliminated in first session
† - Five place penalty for blocking