Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel traded barbs after the prior stormed to a convincing pole position for Sunday’s Australian GP.
A close battle had been building between the two four-time world champions and Max Verstappen in the final part of qualifying, but the Mercedes driver then blew everyone away by going almost nine-tenths faster than his initial Q3 effort to take the top spot by two-thirds of a second.
In the post-session press conference, a surprised Vettel turned to his rival and asked: “What were you doing then?” leading to a snappy response from the Briton.
“I was waiting to put a good lap in so I could wipe the smile off your face!” he grinned.
In fact, though many had expected Red Bull to take the fight to the Brackley-based team, it was the pace of Ferrari which had equally caught Hamilton off-guard.
“What was surprising was to see how quick the Ferraris were,” he claimed.
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The 33-year-old then proceeded to reject the argument that a special qualifying mode on the engine was the reason for his sudden and drastic improvement.
“During that lap I was in the same modes as before but it was hooking up the tyres and getting the lap together,” Hamilton said.
“I’m so happy with that lap. It was such a nice lap. I’m always striving for perfection and that was as close as I could get.
“I’m always in party mode,” he concluded, referring to the nickname he has given Mercedes’ new engine power boost.”
Vettel appeared unconvinced later on though, saying “I don’t know” if he had any other answer for Hamilton’s pace, the Ferrari driver wasn’t too downbeat, however.
“Overall I’m pretty happy. It wasn’t very good yesterday, today was a lot better,” he commented. “I’m quite happy that we put the cars right at the front, very close to pole. That gives us a good shot.
“The last four years everyone’s been closer to Mercedes in the race than in qualifying so hope on that.”
