04/09/2022
NEWS STORY
Lewis Hamilton believes a front row start - his first of the year - was possible.
The Briton, and his teammate, were last out for the final run in Q3 and were on their flyers when Sergio Perez spun off in the final corner bringing out the dreaded yellow flag.
"I think if we hadn't had the yellow flag, we'd have hopefully been fighting for the front row," said Hamilton at session end. "So that's really positive.
"I hope that for the deficit we normally have that we closed the deficit on a single lap, if that can then reflect to our race pace, that would be awesome," he added.
Asked if pole had been possible, he admitted: "I think it's highly optimistic. They were still a bit too quick. But I think the front row was possible."
Toto Wolff didn't agree, the Austrian believing that pole was on the table.
"On our own car data, and we have looked at it a lot, we were actually 0.1s up before the incident," he said.
"Now, we don't know how we would have come out of it but we were definitely aiming for pole position, and that's a good feeling... we want more.
"I think we could have been there or thereabouts."
"Max and Red Bull are too quick for us, our fight is with Ferrari at the moment," said George Russell, who qualified sixth. "I see no reason why we can't battle for a podium, we just need a clean stat, not lose any positions to the midfield drivers and go from there."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Zandvoort here.