Lewis Hamilton says the wet conditions provided him and Mercedes with an opportunity to be more competitive as he secured a front row start for the Sprint at the Chinese Grand Prix.
Mercedes focused on hard tire and high fuel runs in the one free practice session on Friday, but then the team appeared to be struggling on the medium tires in Sprint qualifying. George Russell dropped out in SQ2 with Hamilton just making it through, but a wet SQ3 saw Hamilton excel to take second place behind Lando Norris.
“It was very tricky conditions — not a lot of grip, as you saw for everyone,” Hamilton said. “But yeah, so happy. As soon as I saw the rain coming, I was getting excited. Naturally in dry conditions, we’re not quick enough, so when the rain came, I thought I’d have a bit of a better opportunity, and that’s kind of when it all came alive.”
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Hamilton is hoping for more wet weather for the Sprint on Saturday as he believes the dry pace won’t allow him much chance of retaining his starting position across the 100km distance.
“It really depends what the conditions will be. If it’s like that [wet], maybe we’ll have a chance of being somewhere up there,” he said. “I think if it’s dry, then naturally the Ferraris and Red Bulls will come by. Maybe we can hold off some of the others.”
Despite Hamilton’s pessimism, team principal Toto Wolff told Sky Sports he expects to be able to fight with the likes of McLaren even in dry conditions.
“I think we should have the pace in the dry,” Wolff said. “I don’t think we have the pace against the Red Bulls — I think we are against the McLarens. But again, we don’t know because we have no data from FP1. It could be they are much quicker too, or the other way around.”
Hamilton was provisionally on Sprint pole when the checkered flag came out as Norris had his best lap deleted, but Wolff had no complaints when the McLaren driver’s time was reinstated due to the fact it was the previous lap that he had gone off.
“I haven’t seen the detail, I’ve just seen he has been four tires off track,” Wolff said. “But honestly, that was even slower, so he could probably have gone faster, so I’m OK with that.”