A SPECIAL LAP
L
ewis Hamilton delivered a superb lap in
Canada to match his idol Ayrton Senna’s
record of 65, now two weeks later the
Mercedes driver has gone one better than
the late great Brazilian, claiming pole position
for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with a lap that
he believes was even better than the one in
Montreal.
Pole position in Baku was the 66th of
Hamilton’s F1 career, two shy of Michael
Schumacher’s all time top spot starts. It was
one of those special laps which again stunned
the F1 paddock, coming after a problematic
couple of days of practice, and then delivered in
trying circumstances on his final run.
Hamilton said afterwards, “I came across
the line so happy because even if I was second
it was still an awesome one, single lap, which
I was really proud of. I just want to say a big
thank you to the guys who worked all really
super late last night to make sure the cars are
where they are. Yeah, excited. For me that lap
was… my last lap in Montreal was pretty special
but I think this one topped it.”
“I would say definitely [on Friday] we were
at a bit of a loss as we started in the wrong
place and we had to make a lot of changes
overnight. So to come in this morning not really
knowing if those changes were going to be right
or not… of course we’ve got full confidence in
the team but it’s still very difficult with these tires
as to whether you an switch them on or not.”
“But the changes… the guys did fantastic
work and analysis again last night and we made
fantastic changes to the car and it went in the
right direction and it just progressed from there
into P3 and into qualifying.”