Sebastian Vettel claimed his 3rd consecutive pole position of the season at Baku today, dishing out the perfect lap during Q3 to edge out both the Mercedes men.
Hamilton will accompany Vettel in the front row, missing out on pole position by 0.179 seconds, primarily due to ‘lock-up’.
Kimi Raikkonen could have secured pole as his first two sector timings during his final burst were quicker than Vettel’s, however on Turn-16, Kimi lost a little bit of control and hence had to settle for P6.
Hamilton seemed like a content man after qualifying, as a lot of the pre-race talk was about how the Mercedes has lost pace after Australia and will find it very difficult to make a mark in Baku.
However, with P2 and P3 in the bag, it seems like Mercedes could actually have both their drivers on the podium tomorrow.
The Brit acknowledged Seb’s fabulous weekend, but also sent out a warning along with it.
“Sebastian did a good job, they were quickest all weekend. We’re in the mix. I’m going to try and give Sebastian a hard time” Hamilton said.
Hamilton revealed that the engineers did a fine job with the car after free practice yesterday, changing almost everything possible.
“We did a lot of changes. Pretty much everything on the car.” Hamilton said.
“We were struggling yesterday, we came into today and the engineers did some really great work last night to understand where we were and how we could progress forward,” said Hamilton.
“Thank you to them for their hard work. Today was a much more reasonable car.
“There were still areas where we were lacking, but it’s a work in progress, and to be that close to the Ferraris is definitely a positive.” he added.
The 4 time world champions was surprised with what happened to Red Bull today, as they had been quite impressive in free practice yesterday and today.
“Red Bull also looked promising, not really sure what happened to them.
“To have both me and Valtteri up there is good for the team, a good boost, to be right up there in the mix, so we’re excited for the race.
“Ferrari have a phenomenal car this weekend, but I am happy with the job the team did to get us from where we were yesterday to today. We are in the mix, so I will try to give Seb a hard time tomorrow.” Hamilton concluded.
