QUALIFYING REPORT
The lap time of 1:40.593 which Hamilton
managed to extract in those final minutes came
out of the blue, and he was also the only driver
to dip into the 100 seconds zone around F1’s
second longest race track.
It had been a haphazard Friday for him and
even in FP3 he gave no hint of what he had in
his arsenal, while in contrast Bottas seemed to
have the upper-hand right up until those final
three minutes.
Hamilton said afterwards, “That was one of
the most exciting laps I’ve had all year. A lot of
pressure as we’ve been struggling with getting
temperature in the tyres, I was just praying it was
enough.”
“I’m so pumped with that. Our team worked
hard to get us back out there for one last lap.
Amazing,” added the triple F1 World Champion.
Bottas seemed to have it in the bag when
the red flag waved late on in Q3, and even went
quicker in his final flyer, but it was short of his
teammate’s best and he had to settle for second.
Nevertheless he did his bit for yet another one-
two on the grid for the Silver Arrows.
He summed up his final effort, “The lap in the
end wasn’t quite perfect, I was struggling with the
front-left temperature. Disappointing, but second
place is not bad.”
In the Ferrari camp things went awry
for Sebastian Vettel during FP3 a few hours
earlier and he was never quite comfortable
during qualifying. He was fourth fastest behind
teammate Raikkonen.
The Finn said of the session, “Obviously it’s
better than I’ve had, but I was struggling with the
temperature of the tyres. Luckily the last set had
a better feeling. We are close enough.”