Bottas 'did the job' and deserved pole, admits Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton admitted that his Mercedes team mate Valtteri Bottas simply did the better job in Saturday's qualifying session ahead of the 2019 British Grand Prix.

Bottas claimed pole position for the race by six thousandths of a second ahead of Hamilton, with Ferrari's Charles Leclerc just a further seven hundredths behind.

Hamilton appeared to blew his chance to claim the top spot by running wide at Brooklands in his first Q3 run. Although he improved on his second push lap it wasn't enough to dispose the Finn from the top.

• QUALIFYING: Bottas narrowly beats Hamilton to Silverstone pole

"It's good to get a good lap and get pole," Bottas told the Silverstone crowd after the chequered flag. "It's been pretty close all weekend and today with Lewis.

“There was not much in it with Lewis, but going into the second run there were a lot of places that had margin to improve.

"I knew the first lap was good but it wasn't perfect and honestly I should've improved in the second run," he continued. "I'm glad it was enough, it's not easy to get a lap together.

“It was not a perfect lap, but I doubt anyone did a perfect lap," he pointed out. "It was super sensitive to a mistake here or there because of the tarmac and the wind.

"It reminds you why you do this," he added after cementing his fourth pole of the 2019 season. "Year by year you re always learning and you get quicker if you work. The main thing is to turn those poles into wins."

"Congratulations to Valtteri," Hamilton said in response after the end of the session. "He did a solid job throughout qualifying and ultimately I wasn't good enough.

"I made a mistake on the first lap and the second one just wasn't that great, so fair play to Valtteri who did the job."

Hamilton admitted that he also regretted squandering a run in the second round of qualifying. "We sacrificed a lap in Q2 which would have helped get a reading as to how the car was."

The Briton also said that he hadn't wanted to jeopardise his race set-up by making too many changes going into qualifying.

“The set-up suited the race trim best,” he explained. "On Friday, I really did struggle with it on a single lap and tried to improve it throughout the evening and into today.

"It felt great going into P3 and it felt really good at the start of the qualifying session.

"But it deteriorated as we got through the session, back towards what we had yesterday," he admitted. “It was also windy, but the race trim was still good and I didn’t want to move the set-up I had too far away."

However he still hopes to be able to carry the attack to Bottas in the race itself, which sees them starting alongside each other on the front row of the grid ahead of Leclerc and Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

"It's a long race tomorrow," he said as he set his sights on what would be a record-breaking sixth home win if it were to happen. "We've got the crowd here so we'll see what we can do.

“Fingers crossed, the strength in the race should be quite good. But it depends on what position we are, the wind - and a bunch of other factors!"

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