Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton claimed his sixth pole at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza circuit on Saturday afternoon, his pole of the 2017 season and his record breaking 69th start from first place on the grid.
Owing to heavy rain, Q1 was interrupted at 14:04:30 and restarted at 16:40, but the rain didn't deter the British driver in any way as he secured the team's 150th front row start in Formula One.
Lewis put in a brilliant lap in Q3, after a session where he was the quickest man throughout, and it was undoubtedly a performance worthy of claiming the all-time pole position record, a record that left him lost for words…
“It's very hard to find the words to explain how I feel, I'm trying to figure it all out. It probably won't sink in for a long time. It was an epic day, I feel truly blessed,” he said. “The Red Bulls really made me work hard for the pole today, which I'm grateful for. The weather has obviously been incredibly tricky for us all.”
“What a day to come here in this beautiful country with the English weather and to be massively challenged. It was very difficult to see out there, and very easy to make mistakes - as always in the rain. The second to last lap was ok at the beginning, but then I backed out of it, hoping that I'd get one more lap.”
“There was a lot of pressure for that last lap - there could have been a red flag, there could have been a yellow flag. There was a lot of risk, but I gave it everything. A big thank you to my team for making it all possible, the guys here, the guys back at the factory for continuing to support me.”
“We've got a lot of the sponsors here from Mercedes-Benz and Petronas who have been sponsoring and supporting me for a long, long time, so I'm really grateful for that.”
