MEXICO CITY — Lewis Hamilton praised Mercedes for its turnaround after recovering from a difficult start to the weekend to qualify third for Sunday’s Mexican Grand Prix.
Hamilton settled for a spot on the second row of the grid behind Red Bull pair Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen. The reigning world champion — who needs to finish seventh or higher to claim a fifth title — looked out of sorts during the opening practice sessions on Friday.
« This is a great day for us, » Hamilton declared after qualifying. « Considering how bad yesterday was for us, and so I really want to say a big thank you to everyone who’s back at the factory who’ve been working hard overnight and also the guys here, to rectify the issues we’ve had and get the car back into a sweeter spot. Congratulations to Daniel.
« These guys were just too quick. They were in a league of their own in general up until qualifying and even in qualifying. If you look at his middle sector, there was no way I could get that. To be as close as I am, I’m really quite happy with that, and to be on third, it’s not a bad start. »
Hamilton said his Mercedes felt like a completely different car than it had done 24 hours previously.
« Honestly, it’s night and day difference. Yesterday we really were struggling. FP1 was OK but then once we got to FP2 it was not fun to drive, that’s for sure, and there were several different problems on the whole car, mechanical side, aero side, mostly mechanical side and a little bit aero and a little bit on the engine side of things.
« So big changes and improvements were made overnight and to come back in today and put us in contention all of a sudden – we didn’t think yesterday with that performance that we would be able to qualify on an ultra so that would have been a massive disadvantage for us tomorrow if we had to start on the hyper for example.
« As soon as we got into qualifying, I knew straight away the way the car’s feeling, I was like, ‘OK we’re in a much stronger position to fight for position’. I’m just glad that I was able to do the job, improve on my second run. Qualifying was pretty good for me. »
http://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/25100558/lewis-hamilton-says-red-bull-league-their-own-mexico
