Lewis Hamilton has said he was surprised to claim a front-row starting position for Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia and that he expected Mercedes to be significantly faster.
The Ferrari driver matched his season-best qualifying position of second place (the other occasion was at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, which he went on to win) with a lap 0.298 seconds off Max Verstappen on pole position.
The result follows six races for Hamilton without a podium and he confirmed he was not expecting to be so far up the grid at Sepang.
“Yes, definitely,” he said when asked if the result was a surprise “Firstly, congrats to Max. He’s been so quick all weekend.
“We were kind of looking at fifth or sixth throughout the weekend in that ultimate pace compared to the rest, and we saw Mercedes come with a big upgrade, and considering they’ve been winning every race, I thought the upgrade would really propel them even further forward. But it’s just interesting to find ourselves here. The car felt great.”
Hamilton said the result was even more of a surprise considering Ferrari’s engine is down on power compared to Red Bull and Mercedes. He put the time lost on the straights for Ferrari as greater than his deficit to Verstappen over the lap.
“We’ve obviously been making some great progress, and I mean, the only place we lose is down the straights to them,” he added.
“I think we’re losing three or four tenths [of a second] on the straights to them, which we know of, and so we just work as hard as we can to try and maximise in the corners. But I think we were able to do that today. So, this is really down to the mechanics and the engineers.
“We all did a really great job together. And then also, execution was like really on point. So, if we could keep this up, hopefully we can get better results moving forwards.”
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Hamilton said it has been easy to lose direction with car setup over race weekends this year, but is confident an improvement in engine power would put Ferrari in the mix for victories more regularly.
“I mean, the thing is these cars are so sensitive,” Hamilton added. “Like, you make the smallest change, and it’s ridiculous how the difference it can make from one run, one session to the other.
“You know, one click of front wing, or one millimetre of ride height, a quarter of a degree of camber, or, you know, 0.1 of toe, or something like that. These little things make such a big difference to balance, and it’s literally a moving target that you’re trying to work around with setup, and then also controls that we have.
“Even then, understanding throttle application. If you get on the throttle, if you get to full throttle too early you lose time down the straight. These kind of things that I don’t think many of us like, but mastering all that together is a massive challenge, and obviously makes it even harder for us when, because I think we’re so on the edge, because we are losing so much on the straights.
“So, I’m just hoping that we continue to work hard. If we get to a point where we have base power with these guys, I think we’re going to have even a better fight in the future.”
