04 March 2023 , 17:21
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Lewis Hamilton hinted he was happy with his qualifying result despite only going seventh fastest in Saturday's session.
Qualifying in Bahrain was a tense, tight affair, with little separating the teams in the first two parts of the session. There were no real shocks, with the 'big three' teams all making it safely through to Q3 and Aston Martin living up to the hype by also having both their drivers in the top 10.
But in that all-important final part of qualifying, Mercedes were not really a major factor. They qualified sixth and seventh, with George Russell one place ahead of Hamilton, while both of them were beaten by Fernando Alonso in that rocket ship of an Aston.
A seven-time world champion and ultra competitive racer, you might expect Hamilton to be very unhappy with such a result. But, speaking to Sky Sports after the session, he implied that the result was better than he had expected.
"I went in with a really open mind," he said, before surprisingly adding: "I woke up this morning thinking we were going to be a lot further behind. The fact that we were even getting into Q3 was great.
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"A lot of work happened overnight, all the engineers and everyone back at the factory did a great job. And we made a step forward today, the car was feeling much, much more alive this morning. All of a sudden, we were in a different place than we were the day before.
Max Verstappen took pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix (AP)"But when we got to qualifying, for me, the car just didn't feel alive. It felt kind of average. The direction I'm going in for my setup, I hope it works better for tomorrow. I tried to set it up for tomorrow, but that made it a little bit difficult for qualifying."
Red Bull dominated the final part of the session with Verstappen taking pole position and team-mate Sergio Perez in second. Mercedes were around 0.6 seconds off the pace in qualifying, which Hamilton feels is not an insurmountable gap for his team this season.
He added: "We can catch it. We were six tenths behind at this point last year, but we had bouncing and all sorts of things so it's not an impossible mountain to climb. That's a positive, and I know everyone back at the factory has been working so hard. So we can definitely close that gap – we've just got to really focus and push like never before."