“A year out? No way”, the Mercedes driver said with incredulity when asked at the Spanish Grand Prix about reports in the British and German media.
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“I haven’t had a proper race with Nico yet this year so I am hoping that will start tomorrow”.
Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo finished third ahead of new teammate Max Verstappen, who is set to make his debut for the team on Sunday after a controversial driver switch relegated Daniil Kvyat back to Toro Rosso, Sport24 reported.
Pleased to have turned his fortunes around after a “difficult day” on Friday, Hamilton feels it was “crucial” to get the better of his team-mate from such a position.
But, as both men know, the Spanish race has been won 18 times out of 25 from pole position since 1991, a fact that may give the 31-year-old Briton a clear opportunity to end Rosberg’s run of triumphs and rekindle his own defence of the drivers’ title.
Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari will start fifth, and teammate Sebastian Vettel sixth.
“I am really happy to be in front of both Ferraris and Max, as well”, said Ricciardo.
It was the 52nd career pole for Hamilton, who is looking to turn his season around after a dismal start plagued by mechanical failures and bad luck. But this is three out of three for me – I didn’t get to compete in the last two qualifying sessions. The three-time world champion has yet to win, and already trails his teammate by 43 points after four races.
“Issues have got in the way and yet people say that I’m not focused”.
But Hamilton, whose whirlwind lifestyle away from the track shows no signs of slowing down – he visited New York, Athens, Miami and Barbados in the aftermath of the Russian Grand Prix a fortnight ago – said: “I let my results do the talking”.
“Everyone was feeling the pain of the last couple of races with the faults so I’m just grateful to them for putting the work in. Strategy wise it’s not going to be an easy race tomorrow, so I’ll try to take my chances there”.
Behind the two Mercedes AMG F1 cars, starting on the second row of the grid, are the two Red Bull Racing cars.
On a warm day, with an air temperature of 22 degrees and a track temperature of 42 degrees, qualifying delivered an early surprise with the Q1 elimination of veteran Brazilian Felipe Massa of Williams.
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Home-crowd favorite Fernando Alonso put McLaren into the final qualifying session for the first time since Abu Dhabi in 2014, and will start 10th. Alonso, who has been consistently quicker than teammate Jenson Button all weekend, scraped through by just 0.011s, vindicating his recent optimism at the team’s upgrades in Barcelona.
