Hamilton: Record pole was first clean lap in weekend

Lewis Hamilton was relieved to secure pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix – which is the fastest lap ever set in Sakhir – after struggling to match Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg’s pace all weekend.

Having failed to edge his championship rival in any of the three free practice sessions, Hamilton was up against the wall after making a mistake in his first Q3 run, which left him fourth behind Rosberg and the two Ferraris.

The triple world champion still managed to eke out a 1:29.493 on his final attempt to beat the Bahrain International Circuit lap record set by Mark Webber in a normally aspirated V10-powered Williams-BMW in 2005.

“It’s not been the smoothest of weekends in terms of pace,” Hamilton said. “Nico has been right on it all weekend and I was generally struggling to put laps together. Luckily, the one lap that I did put together was the last lap, probably the only lap of the whole weekend so far.

“I hope that’s the first of many. The car felt great. It’s quite incredible to think that we are quicker now than in the V10 days and it just shows how much improvement technology has come.

“I am so happy with that lap. Throughout qualifying and practice you go round, you do a lap and it was not quite perfect and Nico’s ahead by a tenth. It actually was even more of pressured lap because the previous lap I went off. Knowing that I had to improve makes it just super.”

Lining up for the 51^st time of his career on pole position, Hamilton will now hope the race unfolds more smoothly than a fortnight ago in Australia where he dropped many positions on the opening lap.

Despite Mercedes having made race starts a priority ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix, Hamilton confesses is not sure he and his team have made sufficient headway in that area.

“It’s always important to get a good start. It’s a longer run down to turn one than it was at the last race. Of course, this is something that we have been trying to improve on but it’s been only a couple of weeks so whether or not we’ve made a big improvements I highly doubt it but hopefully it’s better than it was, at least on my side.”

REPORT: Hamilton pips Rosberg to Bahrain pole by 0.077s

AS IT HAPPENED: Bahrain Grand Prix qualifying

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