Lewis Hamilton has revealed his car has been given a boost after a poor qualifying season this year, but a top-three finish at the Singapore Grand Prix has given his car a boost.
McLaren’s Lando Norris took pole position ahead of Max Verstappen, while Hamilton qualified third, three-tenths of a second behind his British teammate. Hamilton said he had struggled with the handling of his car all weekend before qualifying began, but felt much more confident afterward and could threaten the top spots.
“Oh my goodness, qualifying has been a disaster for me all year and I’ve just been working, working, working to get back up and then all of a sudden the car comes alive in qualifying for the first time in a long time,” Hamilton said. “It was a bit embarrassing because we were getting into a rhythm, for all of us, but it was a bit tricky to get that last lap.
“There could have been a little more left in the car, but I’m really grateful. And the mechanics, we’ve been going up and down, changing everything this weekend, and the mechanics have been impeccable. So I want to give them a big thank you and hope they’ll be in a good position to fight on the front lines tomorrow.”
Although Norris was clearly ahead, Hamilton was more than 0.1s behind Verstappen’s time and says he could have beaten Red Bull if he had done better on the final lap.
“I wouldn’t say it was amazing, but we looked, well, I think, really bad all weekend,” he said. “This morning and all of yesterday, we were 1.2 seconds behind these guys. We arrived with a car that was understeering like crazy and we couldn’t adjust anything. No matter what we did, nothing changed.
“I made a change last night and came here today and it was pretty much the same thing, and I was definitely shocked that I was still 1.2 seconds behind Lando. We didn’t put our heads down and gave up, we made a few more changes and came into this session and it was like night and day. It was a huge difference.
“The car suddenly came to life and I could go where I wanted to go. It looked really strong throughout qualifying, [the crash in Q3 made it difficult] So that we can all do the last lap together.
“I don’t think my lap was that special either. It was really hard to get the tyres perfect and not overslide. I snapped a lot, so if I had done better I think we could have been in front… but I don’t know if we would have won. [Norris] Today. I’m still really, really happy.”
