Hamilton’s lap was “more than enough for pole” before yellow flag · RaceFans

Lewis Hamilton believes he could have taken pole position for the sprint race had he not had to slow down in reaction to a yellow flag.

The Mercedes driver’s mini-sector times indicated he was three-tenths of a second quicker than team mate George Russell before he had to back off due to yellow flags at turn 12. Russell missed pole position by just a hundredth of a second.

“I just got unlucky with a yellow flag and that’s what it is,” Hamilton said after the sprint race qualifying session. “I was four-tenths up.”

He briefly encountered the yellow flag as he reached the braking zone for turn 12. Hamilton backed off early, but the yellow flag quickly turned green as the driver whose spin caused it, Franco Colapinto, pulled away.

However Hamilton said he was encouraged by the progress Mercedes have made this weekend after introducing a package of upgrades for their W15.

“The good thing is the team has made a step with the car,” he said. “The upgrade has clearly worked and I’m really grateful to everyone back at the factory for all the hard work over this period of time, because it’s been a tough slog for everyone to get the upgrades and make sure that they’re working.

“So it’s not the end. Tomorrow we got another chance.”

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Both Mercedes drivers appeared to struggle with their cars in the only practice session before qualifying on Friday. Hamilton had a lurid, high-speed spin through the high-speed corners in the first sector.

However he said his team did a “great job” to improve his car between the two sessions. “It’s always a bit of a gamble because you don’t know whether or not it’s going to work, the changes that you make, but you hope they do what you aim to do with them.

“And as soon as I got out [on-track] the car was night-and-day different. So it was great work from the guys in the garage, and then with Bono [Peter Bonnington] and Mike [Sansoni], they did a great job.”

Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin was also convinced Hamilton could have had pole position.

“We can take many positives but ultimately, we end the day slightly frustrated,” he said. “Lewis was on for a lap that would have been more than enough for P1. We had opted to go on the early side to avoid any interruptions with yellows on a busy track at the end of the session.”