Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton may have taken pole position for the Spanish GP, but the championship leader has warned his rivals that he could have gone even quicker. Finishing 0.036 quicker than Red Bull's Max Verstappen after setting his eventual pole lap on the first runs in Q3, Hamilton's lap was set at the same time as Sergio Perez spun his Red Bull in the third sector. Perez lost the rear of his RB16B entering Turn 12, having dipped his left rear wheel into the gravel. The yellow flags were briefly shown, but withdrawn as he quickly recovered. But Hamilton, coming up behind the incident, said he did lose some time as a result of the spin. "There was a bunch of gravel on the track," Hamilton told media, including RacingNews365.com. "There was a puff of smoke. So I came up to Turn 13 and didn't know, so I kind of lifted and left a bit of time on the table. "Max obviously did an amazing job in Q2 and there was no way we could do seven tenths quicker. And then, naturally for them, they've picked up a lot of pace today with the change of rear wing which has given them some nice speed on the straight. And so that's put them in a lot more contention with us." Hamilton said the flying lap he eventually put in was somewhat fortuitous, having made some small changes after FP3. "Yeah, that last lap was everything," Hamilton explained. "Because going into qualifying, I made a change to the car. And as soon as I did the first lap, I was like 'that was not a good change'. "It's crazy that after all these years, you're still trying to find a small improvement, and trying something different so I was just trying to see if I could just get the maximum out of it. Because that's all I got. And it was just about enough."
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