"It feels fresh," claims Hamilton after securing his best qualifying result with Ferrari
Having secured his best qualifying result with Ferrari with his third spot for today's Mexico City Grand Prix, seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton claimed that his result "feels fresh."
Following a strong display at last weekend’s United States Grand Prix, Ferrari seemingly managed to carry this form over to Mexico, crucially with both cars.
On the back of some strong lap times across the three practice sessions, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton both arrived in Q3 with two fresh sets of soft tires and put them to good use.
The Monegasque grabbed provisional pole on the first runs with a staggering improvement. Although he managed to find even more time on his second hot lap, he did not have an answer to the pace of Lando Norris and had to settle for second place on the grid.
Lewis Hamilton sat out the opening practice as part of the requirement that forces each driver to hand over the car to a rookie driver twice across the season.
Despite missing FP1, the Briton managed to find a good setup for the unique requirement of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez to back Leclerc up with his best Grand Prix Qualifying of the year.
Commenting on his best qualifying result with Ferrari, Hamilton said: "I was just saying to these guys, it’s been a long time since I’ve been up here, so it feels fresh. And yeah, really grateful to the team for the hard work and just the constant effort through the year.
"Of course, I wish we had this experience earlier on in the year, but the fact is we’re continuing to improve and continuing to stay positive, and so it’s just great to be up here with these two.
Asked to reveal how Ferrari have found a bit of form in recent weeks, Hamilton added that the Scuderia has "made good steps with the car through the weekend."
"Relatively happy. As Charles said, it is a really difficult circuit. We're all sliding around in general. The grip is quite low at this circuit because of the altitude.
"But even with that, clearly, everyone’s experiencing the same thing and our pace has been great all weekend. I think we’ve made good steps with the car through the weekend.
"Obviously, I missed FP1 — I wouldn’t say that hampered the weekend, but of course, you learn more with more laps on the track. I think I got the car to as good a place as I could. It’s definitely not easy to put a lap together. But yeah, I’m just happy to be here."
Signing off with a word for his expectations for the race, Hamilton noted: "Well, it’s hard to beat these two guys today, but I mean P3 is kind of the perfect spot actually at this track. So I'm hoping I can make the most of that at the start.
"I think our race pace is not too bad. It’s difficult to know already, but I'm really hoping— you know, with this crowd—I know there’s going to be an amazing crowd there tomorrow, so we'll try and give it a good race."
