Hamilton happy with qualifying position: "My last lap was great"

Lewis Hamilton finished as the best of the rest today in qualifying, claiming the final spot on the second row behind Sergio Perez and in fourth place. The Brit beat his teammate George Russell and is extremely happy with his performance this evening, but is aware of the gap between Mercedes and the front runners.

"I am really happy with my qualifying position, to be honest," he told Sky Sports after Q3, "my last lap was great and when I finished it I was like that was an awesome lap but it's still 9 tenths off the guys ahead. I don't understand how the gap has got bigger but they are kinda in their own league."

Strong performance after slow weekend

The Brit gave up his time in FP1 to allow Nyck de Vries to complete a mandatory 'rookie practice' session, but did admit that this caused a slow start to the weekend and made it difficult to find a strong result, he said, "considering I missed FP1, and was on the back foot for FP2, with some really good working coming together, we had a good result."

Updates only bringing small time improvements

To finish, the seven-time World Champion highlighted the big change in time difference compared to Ferrari and Red Bull and that the updates aren't as big as people are thinking when it comes to timings: "When we said we have brought an update. It's the tiniest of things. It could be half a tenth, maybe a tenth if it worked perfect, but it is difficult to see if it worked, to be honest.

"I came here thinking because we were three to four tenths off, that here we would be only three or two tenths off. This weekend we have been over a second off. When we got to 9 tenths off, I was happy with my lap and performance."