Lewis Hamilton had pole position in his and until the dying minutes of the twelve minute third and final qualifying session when his teammate, Valtteri Bottas, put in a stormer of a lap to snatch it away by a few thousandths of a second.

While Hamilton would have loved to secure his seventh consecutive pole position and make it the 250th pole position set by a British driver, he has acknowledged that his teammate did the better job and couldn't wait to congratulate him.

“A big congratulations to Valtteri. He's been working so hard and he's gelled so well with the team. Today he was just quicker than me and did the better job, so hats off to him on his first pole,” Lewis said. “ My lap felt great but it was so close out there. I was losing quite a bit of time through the first sector, which is unusual as it's usually a very strong sector for me. Overall it was a great battle and that's exactly how close qualifying should always be.”

“It forces us to be on the absolute limit. I'm happy with the job I did and it's great for the team to lockout our first front row. Today we had a bit of a margin over the Ferraris but generally in race trim they seem to be a bit quicker, so we expect them to be closer tomorrow. It's definitely going to be tight. Looking after the tyres is difficult, so whether it is a one or two stop race will be interesting to see. Hopefully we'll have a great battle tomorrow.

Toto Wolff, Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport, was also thrilled with the result and is loving seeing the competition between not just his two drivers but everyone on track…
“That's a fantastic result in a really close qualifying session with some great competition between the drivers. I'm very pleased for Valtteri. It was a tough race last weekend in China but he has been chipping away at his qualifying performances and he did a great job this evening, finding the last few hundredths on his second run in Q3,” he said. “As for Lewis, he couldn't quite improve on that final run - but for the first time this season we have both cars on the front row of the grid.”

“The gap to Ferrari looks pretty good here but their drivers were complaining of understeer, so perhaps they have gone with more of a race set-up in mind. And then there's Red Bull. You always have to have them on the radar because they have all the resources they need to be fighting at the front. Tomorrow's race will be all about surviving on the tyres and making the right decisions in terms of strategy. We're starting from the best possible positions and we now need to get the heads down and work hard to convert it into podium finishes tomorrow.”