Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Hamilton wary of Ferrari starts

Lewis Hamilton is wary of being jumped by the two Ferraris at the start of the Italian Grand Prix after taking pole position.

With Mercedes dominant in qualifying, Hamilton took his 11th pole of the season at Monza, edging out Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel by 0.234s. However, with Ferrari having been strong at the start in recent races - jumping in to the lead from third and fifth in Hungary - Hamilton is aware he will be under threat on Sunday.

“It’s always a great feeling getting pole, as Sebastian knows and the same with Kimi," Hamilton said. "I think I’ve had a couple of poles here but it’s not always been good to me, last year I think was not such an easy getaway but it didn’t really matter for the race.

"It’s a long run down to Turn 1, these guys are good off the line so we’ll try to do our best tomorrow. But our race pace has tended to be quite strong so I hope that we repeat that tomorrow.”

And Hamilton says he enjoyed the battle with Ferrari for pole position, but praised Mercedes for its power unit upgrade which kept him ahead.

"These guys did a great job, they’re incredibly close, it’s good to see we have a good fight. The car has been feeling good all weekend, the mechanics have done a fantastic job on both sides of the garage. Big thanks to the guys back at the factory who made improvements to the reliability of the engine and to bring that here is a big step for us."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.