Lewis Hamilton said he planned to turn up the heat on Lando Norris and Max Verstappen at the start of tomorrow's Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
Hamilton recorded his best qualifying result since the 2023 United States Grand Prix, picking up third place on the grid with his Mercedes team mate George Russell alongside him in fourth.
It's only the second time this season that Hamilton has out-qualified his compatriot, the only previous occasion being in Japan, although he was on the front row in the China sprint.
The strong showing in qualifying had not come out of nowhere by any means, with Hamilton also proving to be fastest of anyone at the end of Friday's practice sessions ahead of Verstappen and Carlos Sainz.
Hamilton was delighted by the outcome, and immediately stated his objective of challenging for the lead of the race when the lights go out on Sunday although he was three tenths of a second behind the McLaren and Red Bull cars.
"I did not expect us to be fighting for pole necessarily," he admitted in parc ferme afterwards. "But every now and then it looks like we will be there and it will be close, so I'm just grateful to be there.
"George did a great job as well today, so hopefully we can apply pressure on the two cars ahead," he suggested when asked what he was hoping to achieve in the race.
"Slowly, the car is crafting into a racing machine that we can hopefully fight the guys with at the front," he said, after the team scored a podium last time out in Montreal.
"We've made huge steps forward," he continued of the team's recent resurgence. "It's just down to every single individual back at the factory who is pushing in design, pushing in making the new parts that we get to bring to the races.
"It's been quite a difficult year, so it has been a huge amount of work from everyone back at the factory," he said. "We've finally started to see those incremental steps, and we're closer to the guys in front.
"Today the gap was three tenths, but I think in reality it was less as we didn't get everything out of the car on that last lap," he insisted.
"I'm going into tomorrow focused on trying to fight for the win. We are in a good starting spot with that long run down to turn one.
"Degradation will also play a key role tomorrow and I think our long runs in practice looked strong in that respect. I hope that translates into Sunday and that we can have a good afternoon."
"The car has been feeling great this weekend," Russell offered. "Our pace was strong throughout practice, and we felt confident going into Qualifying.
"A second-row lock-out is a decent result but the gap to Norris and Verstappen was slightly bigger than we expected. Both mine and Lewis set good laps, but I don't think either of us felt that we maximised them.
"On a circuit like this, the ultimate race pace of a car will always win out. I think our race pace looked good throughout the weekend so far and I hope we can fight for the podium and potentially victory."
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