Question: Lewis, you missed out on pole by five one-hundredths-of-a-second after a lap which you described as as good as it gets.
Lewis Hamilton: Yeah, first of all, huge congratulations to my team. A fantastic effort. We have had some new upgrades this weekend and throughout the weekend and throughout the week a constant push to bring updates and to improve some of our engine modes which, have helped massively. We definitely underestimated how good the car would be when we went to light fuel, but it felt fantastic and the lap was just beautifully flowing and it was one of the happiest and most comforting laps I have ever had. It felt just incredible. We are not far from them (Red Bull Racing) so it is a good step for us.
Question: Lewis, you say the upgrades have worked for you this weekend, but how much of a surprise is it to you to find yourself on the front row? You said at the start of the weekend you were optimistic, but surely this is beyond your wildest expectation?
Lewis Hamilton: It is absolutely. I wasn’t expecting the car to feel so great. I think we have found a really good balance throughout with the set-up and I think we were comfortable coming back this weekend, with the rule changes, knowing we would be more competitive. But I don’t think anyone in the team would ever have imagined we would be this close to the Red Bulls and also being able to split them. That’s fantastic and a really fantastic job done by the guys and I am really happy I could put it up here for them.
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Formula 1: Mark Webber Edges Hamilton to Earn Pole For German Grand Prix
Formula 1: German Grand Prix - Race Line Up
Question: Lewis, earlier on I think today, I don’t know if it was today or yesterday, you said that you had no chance of pole position. But as you said you are pretty surprised to be where you are?
Lewis Hamilton: Yeah, just as I was sitting in the car before Q3 I was thinking I might be having to eat my words, but I would still do that. For us, we really honestly never thought we would be anywhere near this place. I don’t know what happened with Jenson (Button). We were struggling with overall downforce grip compared to the others. I don’t know if it was switching tyres on but what was important was that, even though we weren’t the fastest, we kept on trying to dial the car in and improve it and find little bits here and there and we did. We made some changes. The car felt fantastic. It really, really felt fantastic. It is the most exciting and fun part of the weekend, so I was massively excited and positive going in to it. But as soon as I saw we were competitive with the guys at the front it felt great. I would say it is definitely my best qualifying session I can remember having, at least this year. My first Q3 lap was fantastic and then my last lap was even better by quite a bit, so when I came across the line it felt massively satisfying.
Question: You were already saying yesterday that the long run here was better than at Silverstone.
Lewis Hamilton: Yeah, well at Silverstone we really struggled quite a lot with the rule changes - they massively affected us: corner entry, stability, all those kind of things. All the downforce and grip we had and everything we have developed had gone out of the window pretty much. So we were just on the back foot, there was nothing we could do, but coming back into this weekend, with the rules again made it much better. It doesn’t look like it’s massively affected the two Ferraris and the Red Bulls but for us it’s enabled us to get back in the fight so that feels great.
Question: Lewis, was there every any consideration of doing two timed laps on the same set?
Lewis Hamilton: No. We’ve had some interesting experiences in the past where we’ve done that and it’s not been of a benefit to us so we had fresh tyres and every lap that we did was very good, so there was generally no need to have to run another set or the same set again.
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