German GP | Qualifying Press Conference report
Drivers press conference after German Grand Prix qualifying with Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes), Max Verstappen (Red Bull) and Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes).
German GP's qualifying session saw Lewis Hamilton getting another pole position in front of Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas, after both Ferraris stuck in the box for technical problem. The five-time world champion was pretty happy to achieve this great results in front of Mercedes home crowd, with the team celebrating 125 years of motorsport.
"It was a trickful session. I think we had a pretty good pace in the end, pretty quick all weekend. We are really happy on the right time to go on track in Q2, the team worked so hard. It’s really great for Mercedes after 125 years", Hamilton said. "It is a great way to start the weekend. I think the weather can be a threat if we will have rain tomorrow. Not the easiest of track to overtake. Maximize it depends on the temperature, it’s quite difficult risk to do more stops."
Max Verstappen, second with Red Bull, will have its 7th front row start in Formula 1. He reflected about how Ferraris reliability problems helped his qualifying: "It's difficult to say, I think Q1 you could see Ferrari was quite fast, in Q3 gap could have been bigger. Anyway of course it was good for me that they drop off, but from my side I think from Q1 to Q3 I felt like a bit of loss of grip. Still good to start second in this race." Verstappen also spoke about the engine problem he had after the beginning of the session: "I tried a different mode from that run, I lost a bit of power, so I went back to the box to check everything was fine."
Valtteri Bottas also seems quite fine with his second row start: "Overall as a team I think Lewis did a pretty good job in qualifying. Myself, I felt ok in Practice 3. So it was just about confidence on braking, one lap to another. It's difficult but I felt maybe 2-3 tenths I could have improved in Q3", Bottas said.
Main topic of the day was certainly Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc having to start respectively from P20 and P10 tomorrow morning. Would the qualifying results have been different with Ferrari on track?
Valtteri Bottas: "Ferrari were very quick in practice, It would have been nice to see how it ends up in qualifying."
Lewis Hamilton: "I think Leclerc did a good time in Q1, but in Q2 he was second, so I’m not sure. But I imagine that it would have been very very close."
Max Verstappen: "Their car was quick all weekend, Ferrari has amazing top speeds, also I think the layout the track seems to be quite good for them. This is racing of course, we’ll see, I expect them to come back to the front tomorrow"
