Ferrari hope to rely on their race pace after Lewis Hamilton qualified fifth and Charles Leclerc seventh for the Spanish Grand Prix, with both chasing podium honours
Lewis Hamilton is eyeing a first Grand Prix podium with Ferrari today after a rare qualifying performance with which he was “really happy”. The Brit struggled throughout practice in Barcelona but found the pace he needed to out-qualify team-mate Charles Leclerc for only the second time this year.
He starts fifth today and believes Ferrari might have the race pace to be best of the rest behind the McLarens. Hamilton said: “Friday started off fun, but we had some problem with the floor in FP2 and I was losing a lot of downforce.
“But we fixed it for today and the car was much more driveable, much more enjoyable. We clearly have made an improvement going into qualifying to get into Q3 when it’s so close and to be in the top five, I’m really happy with that.”
Hamilton has so often cut a frustrated figure after qualifying in recent times but it was an upbeat seven-time Formula 1 champion who declared he was actually looking forward to the race.
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He added: “I did get a bit of a long run yesterday [in practice] and it’s definitely going to be close between everybody. It’s amazing how close everybody is in qualifying and how half a tenth can put you from sixth down to 11th. That’s pretty mad.
“The long run is going to be challenging tomorrow for everybody. I think most people have mostly softs and one medium, Charles and a couple of other people have two mediums.
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“Which tyres are the best? Which strategy is the best? We’ll see. They key is going to be getting a good start. My goal is to get a podium – I haven’t had a podium in God knows how long, so that’s my target for tomorrow.”
Leclerc starts two places behind in seventh, having gone against Ferrari advice and saved tyres for Sunday’s race. The Monegasque also hopes that risk will pay off in the form of back-to-back podiums after he finished second in Monaco last week.
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Leclerc said: “We were one of the only cars to have only four sets of softs for qualifying, all the others around us had five new softs, so I knew it was going to be difficult.
“I wanted to use only three softs which made our lives a lot more difficult. I take responsibility for it as the team had pushed for a different way.
“But I’m quite happy with my choice. Yes, I sacrificed today, but I hope it will pay off tomorrow. If it doesn’t then it’s my fault. [I’m hoping to get on] the podium. I think the race pace is strong, so it all depends on how much we are going to overtake. We’ll see.”
