Lewis Hamilton bounced back from a bad weekend in Baku and a mediocre Friday in Austria by securing pole on a day when a penalty left teammate Nico Rosberg down in sixth.
Hamilton made the most of the wet conditions in Q3, putting in a great lap after switching to slicks.
“It was a really fun session,” said Hamilton. “It was one of those sessions that it starts off dry, goes wet, and quite incredibly here it dries up so quickly, it’s like driving through fog at some stages. I think it just added to the excitement of the while thing. I’d never driven here in the rain before and, being a new surface as well, it was very, very slippery. It was drying up corner by corner and at the end it was about getting that last lap.
“The previous lap was a good lap as well but if I had finished that lap I would have been right behind Daniel Ricciardo, so I backed off, which was a big risk really. If I didn't finish my lap or there had been a yellow flag I wouldn't have been able to get pole, but it was the risk I took and fortunately it paid off, so very happy with it.”
Hamilton said he wasn't concerned about starting on the ultrasoft tire when some of his main rivals used the supersoft to set their Q2 times.
“I just did what I was told! I think our strategists understand that that ultrasoft was the better tire. We had the supersoft available I think they perhaps saw – I’m guessing – I’m assuming they saw that the Ferraris had gone out and they thought we might try to go out and see if we could do a time on it, even though we think there is a time delta between the two. Naturally a hard tire often goes further so that doesn’t seem like such a bad option.
“I think the ultrasoft is not a good tire for the race. It’s going to be a struggle to get a lot of laps out of it so the strategy will be interesting tomorrow. Obviously those guys are starting behind me so I’m hoping I have a bit of an advantage at the start just from being on the softer tire.”
