Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – Lewis Hamilton said Mercedes had no answer to Verstappen’s pace and believes changing to the soft tyre was always the Red Bull plan.
After trailing his title-rival in FP1, it was Hamilton who was comfortably sitting as the pole favourite and pace-setter through the remaining practice sessions and the first part of qualifying. Q2 saw Max Verstappen close up to within a few thousandths of the Mercedes racer and then pull ahead there and in Q3 once he put the soft compound tyres onto the Red Bull.
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“First of all, Max did a great lap today,” Hamilton said after qualifying. “We just couldn’t compete with that time at the end there. It was looking really strong through practice. We couldn’t answer to that lap, it was a fantastic lap from him.
“As you saw, the first lap [in Q3] I dropped a little bit of time in Turn 5, but the last lap was nice and clean, I just couldn’t go any quicker. I don’t know if it’s tyre prep or whatever it may be in terms of the out lap but nonetheless I couldn’t beat that time that he did today, he fully deserved the pole.”
The seven-time world champion believes that the medium tyres are the right choice for tomorrow’s race but the softs will have the advantage at the start of the race and aside from Hamilton himself, the only other medium runners in the top ten are his teammate, Valtteri Bottas, and Yuki Tsunoda in P6 and P8 respectively.
“The soft runners are going to be busy bees of course,” the British driver told Sky F1. “They’re going to be around me a lot, it’s not going to be as easy on the medium but we’ll see. I hope it’s the better tyre on the long run, though we’ll wait and see.”
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Interestingly, Hamilton doesn’t believe that Verstappen’s lock-up and subsequent flat spotting of his tyre was an accident and thinks that being on the soft compound for the race start was always the plan for Red Bull.
“I’m always kind of sceptical with everything,” Hamilton said in the press conference. “So it’ll be interesting when we go back and look at the information and onboard laps. It’s very rare that people lock-up in Turn 1 but if he truly did lock-up in Turn 1 then maybe whether or not we’ll be in the better position in terms of that tyre or maybe they know something we don’t and that soft tyre was their plan all the time.
“Their long run pace was very, very strong so keeping up with him will not be easy but, if they have the [tyre degradation] that we think that the soft can have, then we might be in a good place.“
