Hamilton hopes to attack on Sunday: 'It's close'

Qualifying in Japan was one of the better qualifying sessions of the current season for Mercedes. Especially for Lewis Hamilton. He managed to put his car in seventh place on the grid. This is obviously not yet where the seven-time world champion wants to be, but he can see the progress in the Mercedes.

Mercedes has been struggling for a long time after a dominant period. This season, this line continues. In Japan, Lewis Hamilton finally managed to get to Q3 again, qualifying in spot seven. After qualifying, he reacted to F1TV. "I'm naturally not happy with P7, of course, but there were a couple of moments where we were higher up. I was hoping to potentially get a little bit closer, but it wasn't meant to be."

Hamilton has high hopes from the Grand Prix

Still, the seven-time world champion does see that his car is a bit faster again and that steps are being made. "I'm happy with just the way the weekend's gone so far in terms of the progress we've made and set up, and much much happier to drive the car. We've really made an improvement in just the envelope that we have however, we had a second deficit last year. Now It is closer, seven-tenths, but we have still got a lot of performance to find with the way that the car feels at the minute."

The Briton is hopeful ahead of the main event, Sunday's Grand Prix. "I think it's gonna be really close between us all. If you look at qualifying, everyone is within half a tenth or whatever, the top seven or eight. I think it's very very very close, so I hope where I put the car is going to be good in the race tomorrow."