Hamilton not expecting much overtaking on Sunday

40

Lewis Hamilton will start tomorrow's Austrian Grand Prix on the front row, alongside his Mercedes team mate Valtteri Bottas who pipped him to pole position by just over a hundredth of a second.

And as far as Hamilton is concerned, that might be as exciting as things are likely to get this weekend at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg.

"Not too bad, I'm happy with it," he said when asked what he felt about coming second in qualifying.

"Valtteri did a stunning lap on the first run and I had a bit of a mistake so that ended the run. But I'm happy with the second one.

"This is a great result for the team, and Valtteri deserves that," he insisted.
"He went a completely different way with the set-up and maybe in hindsight I should have gone that direction as well.

"Valtteri did a better job today, which I'm happy for him. I'm going to work hard to improve my qualifyings."

Mercedes had come into the weekend armed with a raft of new aerodynamic updates, following on from the introduction of a new specification engine last week at Le Castellet.

"Everyone back at the factory has been working so hard," he told Sky Sports F1. "I really appreciate all the hard work to get the upgrade here.

"They've helped us to improve the car, move forward and lock out the front row

"To feel the improvement on the car and for us be ahead of the Ferraris is obviously quite a privilege to be in that position."

Bottas back on pole in Austria ahead of Hamilton and Vettel

Even so, Hamilton had always expected today's session to be tight.

"[Ferrari] were pretty close at one point, but I really wasn't thinking I was going to lose it to Ferrari," he admitted.

"The battle was close between us all, I didn't know who I was going ot be fighting for pole - just knew that it would be close."

However Hamilton doubted that today's close qualifying would translate into a thrilling, edge-of-the-seat race on Sunday.

"You can't really follow here, so I doubt there's going to be a lot of overtaking," he predicted.

"We do have three DRS zones but I'm not really sure it make a big enough difference. But we'll see.

"It don't think it will shuffle up the order. I don't think it's going to do much if I'm really honest.

"We'll just be quicker on the straights where we use less fuel," he added. "But I don't know if we'll even get close enough to activate the DRS."

"Ferrari will start on the ultrasoft tyres whereas Red Bull and us will start on the supersofts so that will be interesting," he acknowledged.

"There is a bit of a performance difference between those tyres, so keeping Sebastian behind at the start will be difficult.

"But I will give it everything I can. It's going to be close tomorrow, but we're in a good position for the race."

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.