Hamilton: "We went in knowing that it was going to be very tight"

Lewis Hamilton has admitted that Mercedes knew all along that it was going to be very close when it came to qualifying in Brazil, but conceded they just didn't quite have the pace to match the leaders.

Hamilton qualified in third for the Brazilian Grand Prix, behind Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel, the prior taking his second career pole position. The Brit will be joined on the second row by his teammate, Valtteri Bottas who benefitted from Charles Leclerc's penalty. 

After qualifying, Hamilton admitted that qualifying was expected to be a battle but revealed they were losing out on the straights.

"It was a challenging qualifying session," Hamilton told the Mercedes website.

"We went in knowing that it was going to be very tight, but in the end we didn’t have the pace to be on pole.

"FP3 was really strong for us, but once we got to Qualifying both Ferrari and Red Bull had great pace and we were losing out on the straights by quite a chunk.

I kept chipping away at it and I think the last lap was as good as it could get for us, I don’t think there was any juice left in the car. I’m happy I got myself into the top three, that makes it a much better challenge for me position-wise to fight for a win."