Lewis Hamilton expects a tough battle for victory after claiming his fifth Spanish Grand Prix pole on Saturday.
The Briton emerged on top, just, during qualifying in Barcelona, beating teammate Valtteri Bottas by just 0.059s as Mercedes’ single-lap domination continued.
And commenting back in parc ferme, Hamilton admitted he would have liked a little more margin in hand.
“I was feeling really strong when I came here,” he said. “It was nice to see through the qualifying sessions that I generally had the upper hand on Valtteri, who is exceptionally quick in the qualifying lap.
“He has worked so hard on the simulator, has studied a lot over the years and is just getting stronger and stronger. It then gets harder and harder for me to raise the bar.
“He keeps me honest and today was a little bit closer than I would have liked. I like to have a good tenth-and-a-half, two tenth gap to whoever it is next to me.
“But I couldn’t go quicker on my second lap,” he added. “I thought I could, but it just wasn’t a great lap. The first one was decent I guess, which did the job thankfully.
“These guys [my engineers] do such a tremendous job. We’re constantly learning. I was here with the guys until 10 o’clock last night looking at all the areas we could improve.”
Hamilton’s pole time of 1m15.584s was actually slower than the lap record set by Bottas last year, despite the 2020 cars being quite a bit faster than last season.
The reason for that is the much higher temperatures teams are dealing with at this year’s race, as this is the first time the Spanish GP has been held in August.
“It’s summer, this is the first time I’ve definitely been here in Barcelona when it’s this hot,” Hamilton said.
“Physically it’s tough, it’s so fast here. It’s the fastest we’ve ever been round here and the forces on the body are intense.
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“As it’s so hot you have to be even more careful on the throttle not to overheat the rear tyres. The tyres are what we’re really struggling with,” he explained.
“You see us pulling around on the out lap, that’s just to keep the temperature out of the tyres, but even with those slow laps you still have the temperatures rising. That’s what we’re trying to manage on those laps.
“There’s corners where you know you can push and some where you can’t, you’re still trying to find that limit and that’s when the car snaps away.
“But it’s what we all do, and I have a huge amount of respect for all the guys here who are battling the same if not similar issues as myself.”
Looking ahead to Sunday, Bottas has already cited the start as a key opportunity to try and get ahead of Hamilton.
And Lewis too knows he’ll be vulnerable to the slipstream.
“It’s such a long way here down to Turn 1,” he said. “The job is not done, that’s for sure. It’s very hard to follow here.
“Positioning is good, but it will be hard to hold position but that’s what I’ve got to work on and try and get the best start I can.”
“It’s going to be really hard tomorrow,” he told Sky Sports. “The Red Bulls I think are a little bit quicker than us in race trim.
“It’s strange how we’re quick in qualifying but then in the race, they close the gap massively and the tables turn a little bit.
“But we’re ahead of them [on the grid], so hopefully we can still apply the pressure a little bit and hold position.”
