Lewis Hamilton isn’t ruling out a fight with Ferrari in tomorrow’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Hamiltontook pole position with a “do or die” lap in qualifying. He’ll have team-mate Valtteri Bottas starting alongside him and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel directly behind. Hamilton will be in the best position of the three, but he doesn’t expect an easy race.
“Being that it’s such a hot race, it’s definitely a difficult one,” he told Sky. “But I’m in a much better position than I was in last year, and as a team we’ve put ourselves in a good position.
“Valtteri is very quick. I think the Ferraris, once they get the car heavy, their race race is stronger, but who knows… I think our car was working really well today, and I anticipated it will be the same tomorrow.”
Hamilton described his qualifying lap as “perfect” but it was a far from perfect session for the Mercedes driver. A mistake on his first flying lap meant Bottas was on provisional pole early in Q3. Red flags were brought out to clear Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull midway through his second flying lap.
By the time the car was cleared, there was only time for one warm up lap before a final attempt to take pole, a problem for Mercedes, who has struggled with warming up tyres so far this weekend.
“All weekend, we have not been able to do it on one [warm up] lap, but others have, so I had to give it everything I had,” he said in the post-qualifying press conference. “Valtteri, I could see he was on a great lap as well.
“Even though it was [only for] second, it was one ultimate lap that I could be proud of.”
Hamilton’s final flying lap put him almost half a second ahead of Bottas, and means he stays on track to match Michael Schumacher’s pole position record by the British GP.
