While Jenson Button sailed to his first McLaren pole in Belgium, Lewis Hamilton could manage no more than eighth position – which will become seventh on the grid as Mark Webber takes a penalty. The 2008 Champion struggled to hide his disappointment, having decided to switch back to McLaren’s previous specification of rear wing.
“Congratulations to Jenson - he did an excellent job and I hope he gets maximum points tomorrow.” Hamilton began. “For me, today was a bit of a disappointment…the setup wasn’t perfect, but that was simply because we chose the wrong rear wing, preferring to stay with the version we used in Hungary.
“The wing we’d been using in FP3 this morning hadn’t been working very well, so we opted to go back to the older wing which we thought would be the safer option. It was a collective choice; we thought the older wing would be quicker in qualifying, but in fact Jenson has shown the new wing to be very good indeed.”
Hamilton has won the Spa race on two occasion, but lost his first victory in 2008 after passing Kimi Räikkönen by cutting the Bus Stop Chicane.
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| Pos. | Driver | Team | Time | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  J. Button | McLaren | 01:47.573 | 14 |
| 2. | K. Kobayashi | Sauber | 01:47.871 | 18 |
| 3. | P. Maldonado | Williams | 01:47.893 | 20 |
| 4. | K. Raikkonen | Lotus | 01:48.205 | 14 |
| 5. | S. Perez | Sauber | 01:48.219 | 16 |
| 6. | F. Alonso | Ferrari | 01:48.313 | 15 |
| 7. | M. Webber | Red Bull | 01:48.392 | 13 |
| 8. | L. Hamilton | McLaren | 01:48.394 | 16 |
| 9. | R. Grosjean | Lotus | 01:48.538 | 18 |
| 10. | P. di Resta | Force India | 01:48.890 | 19 |
| Full results | ||||
| Lewis Hamilton | |||
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