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Austrian Grand Prix Qualifying: WILLIAMS front row – Massa on pole

Valtteri Bottas, Felipe Massa and Nico Rosberg – the front three in Austria The writing was perhaps on the wall for the Mercedes domination of the 2014 F1 season after the Canadian Grand Prix, and the writing is now loud and proud for Williams as they lock out the front row for the Austrian Grand Prix tomorrow. Massa has taken pole – his first pole for six years – with team mate Valtteri Bottas just 0.087 seconds behind as Williams took advantage of errors from Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes, which also compromised Nico Rosberg, creating a Williams front row in the process. Hamilton’s first run didn’t count because he took all four wheels over the white line at turn eight, and he skidded out on his next quick lap, leaving him dead last in final qualifying but starting ninth after Nico Hulkenberg’s disqualification.

Nissan GT-R Nismo confirmed as Nissan opens new Nismo HQ

Nissan has opened a new Nismo HQ in Yokohama and confirmed that there will be a Nissan GT-R Nismo flagship performance car built. So far, we’ve had the Nissan Juke Nismo arrive and the Nissan 370Z Nismo turned up recently too as a production model for the UK and Europe – and we’ve even had a concept of a LEAF Nismo – so we know Nissan are serious about offering Nismo versions even on their least sporty models. But the one car that really doesn’t need a Nismo version is the GT-R, yet to have a range of performance cars under the Nismo banner without having the mighty GT-R at the top of that range would seem odd.

Mercedes SLA Roadster looks likely

As car manufacturers start to look with fresh eyes at smaller, cheaper cars, reports from Germany confirm that Mercedes is close to committing to the SLA, a small Roadster to be based on the next generation A-Class platform. The original SLA concept was shown at Detroit in 2000, and aimed to slot in beneath the SLK. But at that time Mercedes didn’t have a suitable platform on which to base the car, and the project was shelved.