Mercedes surprised by its dominant form

Lewis Hamilton said he was surprised at how much faster the Mercedes race cars in Melbourne were than everyone else after qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix won the sixth best starting position in a row. The Briton was 0.112 seconds faster than his teammate Valtteri Bottas, and third-placed Sebastian Vettel was seven tenths of a second behind him.

Mercedes put itself in a subordinate role before the start of the season, as they claimed that Ferrari's cars were at least half a second faster per lap, which is why their dominant form is all the more surprising for them. “It was a real shock,” Hamilton said after finishing the qualifiers. “We couldn’t have started the season better. Valtteri drove some amazing laps and I had to make a special effort to stay ahead of him. Ferrari was quite close yesterday. We drove with a lot of fuel, but when we reduced the amount we were similarly fast. Then they suddenly lost speed this morning, which I didn’t expect.

The trail is very demanding, as there is a lot of dust on it, there can be several reasons for the fall of their shape. After testing, we returned to the factory knowing that a lot of work awaited us. We had a good foundation, but we knew we were lagging behind. They showed us a summary of the tests and we saw that we were behind Ferrari. We haven't changed the car since then, we just understood the car better. We didn't bring any new parts here. I'm glad that our car is so good, but I know that Ferrari will work hard and make progress in the coming days. ”

With the sixth consecutive best starting position in Australia, Hamilton broke the record of Michael Schumacher, who previously held the longest winning streak in qualifying in Spain, when he started the Spanish Grand Prix for the first time in five consecutive seasons.

The Briton will start the race for the Australian GP tomorrow from the best starting point for the eighth time in his career, thus equaling another Schumacher record, which won the eight best starting positions at the Japanese GP in Suzuki, and the record of Ayrton Senna, who is from the best starting place started the race for the San Marino GP in Imola.

On top of that, Hamilton equaled another Schumacher record, namely 13 consecutive seasons in which he won the pole position, while at the same time improving the round record of 1: 20.486 with a time of 1: 21.164, which he set himself last year.