Lewis Hamilton commented on the relief he felt after grabbing pole position from team-mate and championship rival Nico Rosberg.
The Briton seemed to be on the back foot as he began his final qualifying run, having been tipped to the top of the timesheet by Rosberg in Q2 and squandered his first run in Q3 with a mediocre second sector.
Hamilton locked up heading into the first corner on his final Q3 lap, but still managing to make up for his driver errors and snatch pole by a miniscule 0.007 seconds from Rosberg’ hands and was “relieved” to have fully made up for his driver errors.
“We knew we had the pace but putting all the sectors together is not easy,” said Hamilton when speaking to BBC and sees his third pole position around the streets of Singapore help lead Mercedes to their seventh front-row lockout of the season.
“It’s just the most incredible feeling on the last lap when all the pressure and you know everyone is close, one small, little mistake and you lose a lot”
“I started the lap and you go through turn one, the long-right and then turn three and by then I was already two tenths down, so I was thinking ‘That’s it I won’t be able to gain that back’.
“But I was like ‘let’s keep going, let’s keep going and let’s see what happens’ and the previous lap wasn’t perfect either so I lost a bit of time through turns thirteen and sixteen so I fixed that and got it back and then the last sector was pretty heartful for us so I was happy with that”.
Hamilton found it surprising of how close his rivals were to Mercedes’ pace and wasn’t sandbagging prior to the final segment of qualifying.
“It was kind of strange,” Hamilton added, “In Q1 we were behind the Ferraris and I was thinking ‘Wow, good for them. They’ve made a huge step this weekend'”.
“In the end we just had to keep finding more time, so everytime you come in you look at the data and try to find where you can improve but apart from turn one I did that everywhere else.
With air temperatures set to peak at around degrees 30 celsius for race day and three-stop strategies for tyres being the way to go, Hamilton is anticipating the challenges tomorrow’s race will impose on him with regards to the Singapore heat and tyre management.
“I think tomorrow’s going to be tough physically, mentally, for the car because of the temperatures, for the fans in the grandstands”.
“These tyres are not lasting very long here so how many pitstops people do, all the pit entries and exits, there’s so much room for mistakes and for tomorrow it’s going to be crucial that we’re on point”.
