Lewis Hamilton surprised everyone, including himself, by securing his first pole position for Ferrari in just his second race weekend for the team in China. The Briton beat his arch-rival Max Verstappen by less than two-hundredths of a second to claim the fastest lap in the sprint shootout. Oscar Piastri qualified third with a lap that was a tenth slower.
Not anticipating he would put in a pole-winning performance, Hamilton expressed his shock to his race engineer on the team radio. “Really,” he asked Riccardo Adami when told his lap time was good enough to start from P1 in the sprint race.
Hamilton, however, quickly got his composure back, stating to media persons in the post-qualifying interaction that it was not time to celebrate yet as the qualifying for the main race was pending. “I’m a bit in shock. I can’t believe we got a pole in the sprint. It’s not the main race so we have some work to do for tomorrow,” he said.
“I didn’t expect that result but so happy and so proud. The last race was a disaster for us. We knew there was more performance in the car. It came alive from lap one,” added Hamilton, while congratulatory messages flooded social media. One of the first people to laud him was Red Bull’s e-sports driver Jarno Opmeer.
“Unc still got it,” wrote Opmeer on X.
Fans swarmed to Opmeer’s post to react to Hamilton’s brilliant lap. One fan wrote, “Class is permanent,” while many others shared similar exclamatory comments.
It never left him, just needed that boost
— Josh (@xjosh004) March 21, 2025
Hamilton has struggled immensely during qualifying in the past few years with Mercedes. And many had questioned whether he had still got it. There were times when he questioned his abilities too.
But with his pole with Ferrari, he may have done enough to silence his detractors, including the biggest critic of them all — himself.
La radio de Hamilton de su primera mini-pole con Ferrari#f1 #ChinaGP #pole #ferrari
— Adrigamer95 (@Adrian01588751) March 21, 2025
The seven-time world champion was also relieved to put on such a performance after his disaster of a debut with Ferrari last weekend in Australia. He managed a 10th-place finish at Albert Park.
With the pole, a confident air has taken over the Ferrari camp, who are now confident of a better finish in China — podium, or even a victory.
