Hamilton surprised by Carlos Sainz: "I don't fully understand"

Despite the party mode ban, Mercedes was able to fill the first row of the grid again during qualifying at Monza. According to Lewis Hamilton, the perfect strategy certainly helped beat the competition.

Qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix can be pretty messy at times. For example, last year only Carlos Sainz crossed the line in time for the second run in Q3. This year's qualifying session has been rather chaotic, especially in Q1 and Q2.

However, Mercedes didn't suffer from the overcrowded track and drivers overtaking each other. "I think we learned last year in terms of going out at the end is not the best for us. I think the strategy team did a really good job in terms of the timing. It’s something we discussed yesterday and today and ultimately I think it was bang on," said the leader of the standings at the press conference after qualifying.

Surprised by Sainz

During the press conference, Carlos Sainz was next to Hamilton. The McLaren driver managed to secure third place on the grid. He qualified 0.8 seconds behind Hamilton. "I don’t come into the weekends with the expectation of how much of a gap we are going to have. But of course… I don’t really understand it. We did say last week when they brought in this rule to slow us down that it wasn’t going to make a difference but we have a great, great car and we are better in other areas".

"We’ve really got the car in a sweet spot this weekend. So, just a huge thank you to all the guys back at the factory for the simulations and working on getting parts to these races and continuously stepping forwards. It’s such a hard thing to do and I think people take it for granted because we do it weekend in, weekend out. It was very, very close. He’s been very, very quick so far this weekend," concludes the six-time world champion.