Lewis Hamilton has praised the Ferrari team after securing a front-row starting position for the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.
Hamilton narrowly missed out on pole position for the race, with former team-mate George Russell bagging Mercedes' seventh pole of the year.
It marked a strong turnaround for Hamilton after practice as he consistently looked off the pace and the slower of the two Ferraris.
The seven-time champion stated he was knocked off his rhythm by stepping aside for FP1, with Ferrari junior Dino Beganovic completing the run in the car as part of the mandatory rookie outings.
“It’s been a very tricky weekend for me, personally,” Hamilton told media including RacingNews365. “I really struggled to get on pace after missing FP1.
“I’ve never been so down before in a sense of the gap between Charles and I and to everybody else.
“It was half a second to eight-tenths. I think it was one second in one session to the front row, so I needed to make a huge leap going into qualifying, and I knew where the time was.”
While Hamilton was able to climb into the fight for pole, team-mate Charles Leclerc crashed at the start of Q3.
It has left Ferrari fighting one-handed against Mercedes on Sunday as Hamilton targets his first win with the Italian squad.
“It was just having the confidence in the car, in the rear of the car,” he added. “And I think we did a really good job, making adjustments.
“But this is really down to everyone back at the factory. They’ve been working so hard.
“We kind of know where our North Star is and for them to bring this upgrade here this weekend, I can’t thank them enough for the hard work that they’ve put in to bring it.
“It’s a competition between all the teams to who can bring the most and it helps us close the gap.
“The car felt great in qualifying. Obviously, they’re still so quick, the Mercedes, so still have work to do to fully close the gap or at least get ahead.
“I’m really hoping that tomorrow we can. It would be nice for us to, for once, be able to hold on to them, but we’ll see.”
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