Hamilton: 'There was no room for error'

The pilot Mercedes was able to get a first indication of this during Free Practice 3 where Sebastian Vettel had signed the best brand. In qualifying, Hamilton had to draw on his resources to snatch his 9th pole position of the season. At the end of Q3, the leader of the Silver Arrows and the two Ferrari of Vettel and Kimi Räikkönen were within 70 thousandths. 

« It was downright intense on the track, Hamilton said afterwards. When I arrived at the circuit today, I didn't really know what to expect because we had mainly driven in the wet. It seems that the Ferraris have made changes and they have clearly borne fruit. I knew going into qualifying that it would be very close and that we would have to deliver very clean laps to get the best of them. 

James (Vowles, Editor’s note), our strategy manager had warned me that the session would be very competitive. In Q3, the first flying lap was good but it was already very close and I knew that the Ferraris were going to improve their mark so there was no room for error.

However this season, I have already experienced Q3s where I cut my effort during the second round because I was not improving. Today, I really concentrated and said to myself in the car: “You have to apply yourself to this second attempt”. I'm glad I did it. 

The team has demonstrated exemplary behavior since the start of the weekend. We knew that we shouldn’t see ourselves looking too good, we followed our usual roadmap while making the same efforts.” 

Hamilton, who can be crowned for a 5th time in his career, will start with the Super-Soft tire that he used to achieve his reference time in Q2. Wearing red sidewall rubber, the Mercedes driver was four tenths slower than Vettel with the same compound. What should the championship leader be concerned about?

“I don’t know where I wasted time, he replied. Obviously, they are very fast. This shows that we are on the same level in terms of performance this weekend. They brought developments, not us. In any case, it's great to see such tight gaps ».

Hamilton only needs to score eight points more than Vettel on Sunday to be titled.