Mercedes bounced back from a tough weekend at Spa to qualify fourth and sixth for the Dutch Grand Prix with Hamilton and team-mate George Russell mingling with the Ferrari and Red Bull cars.
Hamilton finished qualifying four-tenths of a second behind Max Verstappen’s pole position, but was forced to abandon his last effort in Q3 following a spin for Sergio Perez.
“I think if we hadn’t had the yellow flag we would have fought for the front row,” Hamilton said, calling the result “really positive” after struggling so much at Spa last weekend.
“So that’s really positive. Hopefully for the deficit that we normally have, we made up the deficit on just one lap, if that can then reflect on our race pace that would be great.”
Although Hamilton thought the front row was possible, he doubted he could have beaten Verstappen in P1 and scored his first pole of the year.
“I think it’s very optimistic,” Hamilton said. “They were still a bit too fast. But I think the front row was possible.”
But Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff was confident Hamilton was in the hunt for pole, revealing team data showed he was ahead of Verstappen’s time before taking off.
“On our own car data and we looked at that a lot, we were actually one tenth before the incident,” Wolff said.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
“Now we don’t know how we would have come out of it. But I think we were definitely [fighting] for pole position. And it’s a good feeling.
“We want more. And I think we could have been there or close to it.”
Mercedes were still expected to bounce back at Zandvoort given the more favorable track layout and warmer temperatures than the team faced at Spa, where Hamilton finished more than a second off pole.
Hamilton said he was “definitely optimistic for the race”, but noted that it was “just hard to overtake here, so we’ll see”.
“I didn’t do a long run, but George did and it looked pretty good. The car felt good today and I felt like I could go faster.
“I hope that translates tomorrow, like I said, but I will definitely pull and push as hard as I can for a podium.”
Russell was also hoping to battle with Ferrari for the top three on Sunday, but faced a tough Q2 that forced him to take a second set of fresh tyres.
“It was our lack of performance in Q2 that surprised us,” Russell said.
George Russell, Mercedes-AMG
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
“We had to take a second set and then we only had one set in Q3. So that was a bit strange and really messed up our overall plan.
Russell felt the team couldn’t “really understand why we were so slow at Spa and why from the start we showed more promising performances this weekend”.
He added: “But in the end Max and Red Bull are too fast for us. Our fight and our battle is with Ferrari right now.”
