Reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton attributes his qualifying performance to his Mercedes team changing "pretty much everything" on his car to secure a front row start for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
After a tough start to the weekend with pace which looked to be missing throughout both Friday practice sessions, Hamilton was able to extract the most out of the W09 to be in the best position possible to challenge for victory.
When asked about what improves the team had made overnight, Hamilton said: "Yesterday we were sliding around a lot, so setup wing level, ride heights. Pretty much everything on the car, they did a lot of changes.
"Today, the car was much more reasonable. There were still areas where we were lacking but it’s a work in progress I would say and to be that close to the Ferraris is definitely a positive and to have me and Valtteri up there is a good booster for the team to be right there in up in the mix.
"I'm excited for the race. It’s very hard to overtake here as it is anywhere around the world, but we’ll give it everything we’ve got."
Valtteri Bottas shared the same sentiments as Hamilton over the performance of the Mercedes, believing there is still some gains to find within the W09 compared to the pace of the Ferrari's.
"I think, like Lewis said, we made some good progress since yesterday," added the Finn, who qualified third. "The end result today was a lot better than what we saw and thought it could be today.
"We believed we can fix the issues, just like we did here last year here actually, from Friday to Saturday and, yeah, we were still finding out the way with the setup in Practice Three and made it even better for qualifying. Definitely, the best car I had this weekend, so far.
"I felt that I could never quite get the perfect lap. It is extremely difficult here – and, especially the second run I was still missing something. I feel maybe still Ferrari was too quick for us but yeah, as a team reasonable result now. We have both cars in pretty good position to fight for the win.
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