Hamilton speaks on his record-breaking lap, post-qualifying reprimand
Lewis Hamilton had to work hard for his pole position in Bahrain after making a mistake on the last corner of his first run in Q3.
That left him in fourth place prior the final runs and, with the pressure on, he performed superbly to set the fastest ever qualifying lap of the Bahrain track, beating the 2005 V10 record.
“It’s obviously not been a smooth-sailing weekend in terms of pace,” said Hamilton. “Nico’s been right on it all weekend and I was just generally struggling to put laps together. Luckily the one lap I did put together was the last lap. That was actually the only lap probably the whole weekend so far. I hope that’s the first of many.
“The car felt great. It’s quite incredible to think that we are quicker now to the V10 days. It just shows how far technology has come. Lastly, just for my engineers and mechanics who have been biting their nails all weekend and working so hard to get the car to where it is today. A big thank you to everyone here and also at the factory.”
In Australia, Lewis made his life harder by making a bad start, and he acknowledged that it would be key once more, given that Ferrari appears to be good off the line.
“It will be, for sure it’s always important to get a good start. It’s a longer run down to Turn One than there was in the last race. Of course it’s something we’ve been trying to improve on, but it's only been a couple of weeks so whether or not we’ve made big improvements I highly doubt it, but hopefully it’s better than it was, on my side at least.
“But yeah, just really happy with that lap. So happy with that lap, because throughout qualifying and practice you go round, do a lap, it wasn’t quite perfect, Nico goes a tenth ahead or whatever it may be, so to finally pull it all together… It was actually even more of a pressured lap as well, because the previous lap I went off, so knowing that I’ve got to improve even more so than I did on the lap before, so yeah, super happy.”
Meanwhile, Hamilton escaped with a reprimand after reversing in the pitlane at the end of the session, when there was some confusion over where he should park.
“I slowed down under the speed limit for quite a long way, trying to figure out which way I was going. Usually there's a guy standing there telling you which way to go. Basically there was no one there or the guy that was there wasn't looking anyway. So I thought I perhaps had to go in front of that group. Usually we have one-two-three kind of thing.
“So I pulled up ahead of them and no one was there. And that was it really. Then I was on the blue area where we take the photo at the end – I was on it, so I just reversed off it and stopped, so it meant I was in line for the weighing scales.”
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