Hamilton’s result was a surprise as he had been off the pace throughout the second and third practice sessions after handing his car to junior driver Dino Beganovic for the first session.
He took the unusual step of leaving the paddock between final practice and qualifying to try to get himself in the right head space for the session.
“I was thinking all weekend, ‘Why am I half a second off?’ Hamilton said. “And I just was down everywhere. Struggled through (Turn) Three, struggled through Turn Nine and having that confidence in that high-speed.
“But the engineers did a great job with the small adjustments on the set-up.
“For the first time ever, I left the track between P3 and qualifying. I said, ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’ And I went back to my motorhome and I was just on the engineer call, just on my phone, but I kind of went where I had a bit of a reset. Came back and I was able to somehow get back on it. So yeah, whatever it did, it worked.”
Prospects for the race are uncertain because tyre degradation is even higher than expected on a track which is always tough for tyres.
“We came into the weekend with an expectation of what the tyres are going to be, and for us, we had twice the amount of deg,” Hamilton said.
“It will be interesting to see if that’s improved going into tomorrow, but yes, it’s going to be at least a two (pit-stop race).
“They’re still so quick, the Mercedes, so still have work to do to fully close the gap or at least get ahead, but I’m really hoping that tomorrow we can. It would be nice for us to, for once, be able to hold on to them, but we’ll see.”
Leclerc crashed on his first run in qualifying, hitting the barriers after losing control on the exit of Turn Four, and said he was “ashamed of not putting everything together on what was a very positive weekend so far”.
Hamilton said: “Charles has been quick all weekend. I was braking very late into Turn Four, which had been visible, and I think Charles probably tried to carry a lot of speed into that corner and, unfortunately, it didn’t work out for him.”
