Lewis Hamilton finished just 0.064 seconds behind pole sitter George Russell in qualifying for the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, a spot Hamilton believes puts his Ferrari team “in a good position to be able to fight” for first place in Monday’s race.
In finishing just behind the Mercedes driver, Hamilton notched his best qualifying performance ahead of a Grand Prix.
Charles Leclerc of Ferrari. Getty
His position for Monday’s 66-lap race will be his first Grand Prix front-row start since 2024’s British Grand Prix.
“All weekend we’ve been kind of four-tenths off these guys, so even with the upgrade we thought maybe that’s where we were,” said Hamilton.
“But for us to be that close, less than a tenth between us, it’s a real showing of the hard work everyone at the factory has done to bring these upgrades to this track, so a big, big thank you to everyone back in Maranello.
“We’ve just got to keep pushing, keep developing, and I’m hoping tomorrow we can squeeze some more out of this and I hope we keep up with these guys for once.”
The seven-time World Champion topped Q1 on Sunday. His teammate, Charles Leclerc, finished less than half-a-tenth behind Russell in Q2 before suffering a crash at the start of Q3.
A frustrated Leclerc also crashed out of the most recent Grand Prix in Monaco. At the time, he blamed his brakes, but he has no such excuse this time around.
“No, no, there’s none of that,” he said when asked about the brakes.
“I adapted very well straight from FP2, I felt very at ease with it, and there’s nothing of that – there’s no excuses.
“I felt very ashamed after the last three weekends that have been particularly difficult for me to find pace for issues I had.
“Today, and this weekend, I think everything felt really, really good and on these days I need to deliver and I didn’t. So I felt very ashamed in general.”
Runaway championship leader Kimi Antonelli came in third in the other Mercedes, with McLaren’s Lando Norris taking the fourth slot.
“It has been a little bit of a difficult weekend for me, didn’t really have the feeling in the car,” said Antonelli, who has 156 points after just six races, a whopping 66 points ahead of Hamilton and 68 ahead of Russell.
“It’s going to be an interesting race tomorrow,” Russell said.
“Lewis did an amazing job to get up there. We thought the fight was with ourselves and McLaren and Lewis was very fast in that session.”
Australian Oscar Piastri qualified seventh, behind both Red Bulls.