Hamilton expects qualifying to decide Sunday's race

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Lewis Hamilton said that he wasn't expecting Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix to be an exciting race, as most of the work will be done on Saturday during qualifying instead.

"Everyone that's expecting a good race should know this is a track where you really can't overtake, so qualifying is going to be the race mostly and then they'll see a procession - a train - on Sunday.

"There's some things can happen obviously like last year but generally you won't see passing between us: you're going to see cars following.

"But hopefully because it's so close there's going to be - whoever's first second or third - there's going to be us all in between and then it's going to come down to that one pit stop, unfortunately, because the tyres are too hard still so we'll be one-stop here as it was last year."

Hamilton was sounding distinctly underwhelmed with the new ultrasofts, remarking on several occasions that "To be honest, they're pretty much supersofts with purple paint!

"The tyres don't feel great. Whether or not it's the tyres not feeling great or whether they're actually up in temperature or over temperature or whatever it may be they're very very strange, they can switch on or off these tyres."

However Hamilton admitted that he was surprised by how well the Red Bulls were doing this weekend, with Daniel Ricciardo six-tenths of a second faster than Hamilton in FP2 on Thursday.

"I think they are very much a threat, yes. Definitely a threat, very very fast a lap. I don't know where six tenths is. I for sure have a little bit of time left. It's within tenths, it's very close. We shall see how it goes [on Saturday].

"At the end I don't feel like I got a great lap. There's still time in me - not six tenths, but there's time. I think it definitely closer than it looks there. But I think [on Saturday] you'll see us within tenths of a second between the Red Bulls and us."

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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.