Hamilton said: “Even though it’s not the main pole it gives me real inspiration to go into tomorrow and try to find more performance and see if we can compete again. There’s definitely a little more performance to find, for sure.”
Leclerc said: “I struggled on my side of the garage. From the beginning I felt I was a step back from Lewis and he was just faster.
“Struggled a lot in Turns One, Two and Three, which is the same as last year more or less. Apart from that, everything was quite tight. It’s a shame we start P4 but Lewis is on pole and hopefully we can have a strong race.”
Behind Verstappen in second, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri took third, ahead of Leclerc, the Mercedes of George Russell and Norris.
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur said he believed the result was a reflection of the closeness of competition between the top four teams and the difficulty of getting the cars into the right set-up window and the tyres behaving at their optimum.
Vasseur said: “The day was a bit difficult to read. McLaren was in front this morning and in Q1 we were in front, Q2 they were mega, Q3 we were back.
“I think it is linked to tyre management. If you are not in the right window, you are struggling a lot but it is good for the team.
“We had a tough weekend in Melbourne but the Friday was good. It is a bit like this weekend, very up and down.
“It is exactly the same picture as last year – the last four races, three or four teams were able to win by 30 seconds from track to track depending on the tyres.”
Source link : https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/articles/ceqjell0qpdo
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Publish date : 2025-03-21 10:11:40
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