99th POLE JOY HAS LEWIS LOVING LIFE
LEWIS HAMILTON ended a thrilling qualifying session by claiming his 99th F1 career pole at Imola then beamed: ‘‘I’m just lovin’ it!’’ Sergio Perez beat his team-mate Maxverstappen to line up behind Hamilton in only his second outing in a Red Bull.
Britain’s world champion said: “The day’s been great.
“I definitely didn’t expect us to be ahead of two
Red Bulls. I think they’ve been so quick this weekend, there were times they were six-tenths ahead.
“We didn’t really know where we’d be, but the car was already feeling a lot better from the beginning this weekend – so my respect to the team for the hard work to really narrow down the window.”
Hamilton will have a lonely start to his race tomorrow next to two Red Bulls with his team-mate
Valtteri Bottas starting eighth on the grid. But the seven-time world champion was up for the challenge. He said: “I love it, I love the challenge. It’s great finally we’ve got the two Red Bulls there.
“It’s going to definitely make the strategy harder, and it’s going to be a real challenge because they’ve got great race pace.
“But I’m really grateful. I came round the last corner and found out that I got the pole and I was super grateful for that.”
Mercedes were expecting to struggle again coming into the weekend after being on the back foot during the opening weekend of the season in Bahrain, despite
Hamilton eventually claiming victory.
The top three drivers were separated by less than a tenth of a second in the battle for pole yesterday, with Verstappen being out-run by his team-mate.
Lando Norris hooked up his Mclaren throughout the whole of qualifying but had his final flying lap time deleted and starts in P7, while his team-mate Daniel Ricciardo starts sixth.
Meanwhile, both Williams drivers made it through to Q2 for the first time since Hungary 2020 but were just short of Q3.
George Russell was agonisingly close to the top-10 shootout, but missed out by 0.123 seconds and will start P12. His team-mate Nicholas Latifi starts P14 just ahead of Sebastianvettel in the Aston Martin. Fernando Alonso, on his return to F1, starts P15.
After his heroics in the opening race of the season, scoring points on his F1 debut,alphatauri’syuki Tsunoda crashed in Q1 and will start from the back of the grid.