Hamilton aims to put all-Mercedes front row to good use

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Lewis Hamilton claimed third place in Saturday's sprint race at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace, the result of which set the starting grid for Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix.

Hamilton's Mercedes team mate George Russell took the top spot and will start from P1, while Ferrari's Carlos Sainz finished second but will drop down five places due to an engine change penalty.

That puts Hamilton up to second, joining Russell in an all-Mercedes front row now that the race stewards have decided against imposing a penalty on him for a starting grid issue in today's sprint race.

Read also: Russell out-duels Verstappen to secure Brazil sprint win

He had been under investigation for "possible start infringements", along with Daniel Ricciardo and Zhou Guanyu.

Hamilton appeared to lined up behind the yellow line on the grid that determines whether of not the driver has jumped their slot. However Mercedes chief race engineer Andrew Shovlin had been confident that Hamilton would not be punished.

"It may be linked to positioning in the box, but we've got the onboard and it looks like we're very conservative in where we positioned the car in terms of the line," he told Sky Sports F1.

"It might have been a sensor issue, I don't know, but from the image we've seen, there doesn't look to be any hint that we were outside the box," he added. "I wasn't talking to race control, but they said they'd defer the decision until after the race."

The stewards confirmed that there would be no further action taken against Hamilton, with Ricciardo and Zhou similarly exhonerated.

Talking with the media in parc ferme after the finish, Hamilton congratulated Russell on his first F1 race win (if not Grand Prix victory) and was looking forward to Sunday.

“I'm so, so happy to be here,” admitted the Mercedes driver. “It's been an incredible week. Difficult day yesterday, but what a crowd we've had today.

"First, congratulations to George," he said. "My race was all about working my way up from P8, and this result goes to everyone back at the factory, everyone here at the track, they have just been working so hard this year

"For us to be on the front row tomorrow is incredible. From there we should be able to work as a team and hopefully hold off the guys behind,"" he said.

We're going to be pushing as hard as we can and if we can have good tyre degradation and hopefully some good weather, then we will have a nice fight on our hands."

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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.