Despite admitting that he was ‘disappointed' to have qualified third on the grid for the Turkish Grand Prix as a result of making the wrong tyre choice on his final run in Q3,
Lewis Hamilton insisted the McLaren-Mercedes MP4-23 is the quickest it has ever been in Istanbul this weekend.
The young Briton elected to put
Bridgestone's harder compound rubber on for his last flying lap, leaving him just over a tenth of a second adrift of team-mate
Heikki Kovalainen and three tenths shy of
Felipe Massa on pole – albeit ahead of the Brazilian's
Ferrari team-mate, and key championship rival,
Kimi Raikkonen.
“It was a tough qualifying session for me,” the 23-year-old reflected afterwards. “Obviously at the beginning I had a fantastic lap in Q1. In Q2 I struggled a little bit on the option tyre, and therefore I opted for the prime tyre as I thought perhaps it was so close and would be a more consistent tyre through the lap. I guess I made the wrong decision – it didn't give me the performance and the car didn't feel great
“I struggled on my first Q3 lap. It was terrible – I think I was in the 1m29s. The second one for sure was an improvement, but still it was not quick enough. [It] could be better, for sure, and the lap wasn't very good either, so [I was] pretty disappointed in qualifying. Not frustrating, disappointing.
“I'm always hard on myself and that's the way I do it – that's how I do my business, that's how I go about it. I don't feel that I made any mistakes. I did the best I could with the car, but we need to improve in terms of preparing and making decisions. I do it all on my own.”
On the positive side, Hamilton did admit to having been boosted by
McLaren's pace thus far this weekend, well aware that he needs to begin making inroads into Raikkonen's nine-point advantage in the drivers' title chase – and on a track that practically encourages overtaking, he knows he at least has a half-decent opportunity of doing just that.
