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Lewis Hamilton looks forward to tomorrow’s race and says the team needs to “do absolutely everything and more” to keep Red Bull behind.
Today in Emilia Romagna Grand Prix qualifying Lewis Hamilton pulled another great performance out of his hat and managed to score a close pole position, just 0.035s ahead of Sergio Perez.
“We knew in Bahrain that it was going to be close and it is going to be close throughout the season,” the Briton said.
“It’s going to take laps like that — it’s going to take us as a team performing as close to perfection as possible, not leaving any stone unturned.
“I know that’s kind of the idea going to most weekends but we can’t afford any slip-ups. I think so far, we’ve really been firing on all cylinders. We still are hunting, believe it or not.
“I think today was just really fortunate. As Sergio was saying, it wasn’t the perfect lap for him but for all of us, we all operate at such a high level, the differences are milliseconds between us all.
“We could all go back and look at our data and say we can go faster but at the end of the day it’s what you do at that one moment that counts. That’s what we are trying to focus on.
“I am just amazed at how close it is and how exciting that is. It really adds to the fire and to the adrenaline rush.
“I didn’t know whether or not these guys had improved on that last lap for quite some time, so I was definitely nervous and that’s the excitement of closer racing.
“Really grateful to the team. We came here, the car was feeling better already from the first lap out and I think that’s probably track dependent.
“Really good steps forward — just one step at a time all weekend and fantastic work from everyone.”
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Hamilton says cooler conditions at Imola, and Mercedes’ improvements over the weekend played a part in this great performance.
“Once we finished P3, we had that gap to the Red Bulls. I couldn’t go six-tenths faster but we just kept our heads down and worked on tweaking the car going into qualifying.
“Generally very, very smooth, great strategy in terms of getting us out in clean air on all of our runs. I managed to do my time on the medium and I got to have a practice run on the softs.
“Then I knew going into qualifying, particularly that last lap was going to take something special — really had to be the most perfect lap that I could do, a little bit more in order to beat the Red Bulls.
“They really have been so fast all weekend. I didn’t honestly know whether we could do it or not but, the first lap for example in Q3, started a tenth up out of Turn 1 and 2 and I knew that I was onto a good lap.
“I think in the second sector, I lost a little bit in Turn 12. The second time around, I came out of Turn 1 and 2 a tenth down, by the time I got to Turn 9 was a tenth and half down but managed to regain that through the middle and the last sector.
“Having those two together I think would have been the perfect, perfect lap but I am honestly so happy with that lap, the first lap was where it counted. Grateful for it.”
However tomorrow Hamilton is facing a tough battle. With his team-mate Valtteri Bottas in P8, Hamilton will have to face the two Red Bulls alone in the opening stages of the race.
“It’s much different from the past experiences. I can’t remember the last time we’ve seen the two Red Bulls so close.
“I think tomorrow, of course, if we’re able to get off in order, then they have a bit of a better set of cars in terms of strategy. That doesn’t mean we can’t pull out something unique and do something different.
“I am not really sure what happened with Valtteri — it’s really hard to overtake here so I probably won’t have the support of him early on.
“Nevertheless, maybe he will make it though but otherwise, we just need to focus on our job and try to do absolutely everything and more to keep these guys behind,” concluded Hamilton.
