Hamilton questions Red Bull’s pace drop-off: 'Just look at the DRS...'

Hamilton sensationally ended his long drought to claim his 104th career pole position, beating Verstappen by just 0.003s.

It was a remarkable turnaround for Mercedes, who were well off the pace in practice as Hamilton complained about the ill-handling of the W14.

While Red Bull have won all 10 races in F1 2023, their pace advantage seems to have come down in recent races, especially in qualifying.

Lando Norris nearly beat Verstappen to pole at Silverstone, while the Dutchman couldn’t improve on his final lap at the Hungaroring.

Giving his thoughts on Red Bull’s mini-decline, Hamilton said: “Honestly, I think they’ve slowed quite a bit from the beginning of the year. 

“I mean just look at the DRS, they don’t have the DRS advantage all of a sudden they used to have - where did that go? They just had an upgrade so we expected them to take another step. We heard it was around two-tenths or something like that so for them not to be able to extract that in qualifying was interesting.

“I think in the race they’re still the quickest and it will be very hard to beat them tomorrow. We’re just as surprised as everybody else. Interesting to see some of the deficits and how it’s changed from race to race and how we’ve all closed up.”

Hamilton was understandably jubilant after qualifying, admitting he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had taken pole because it had been so long - Saudi Arabia 2021.

“Honestly, it feels like my first pole, believe it or not,” he added. “I know there’s been a lot and it feels strange to say that when there’s been 104. I don’t remember the last time I had a pole - it feels so long ago. 

“We were not expecting that coming into the weekend. We didn’t have an upgrade or anything like that. We’ve made small tweaks to our reward wing and front wing but the car felt terrible yesterday. We did some really, really great work overnight and we were relieved it felt good this morning but not in shooting range of the other guys - they seemed too far ahead for us but as we started going through the qualy session… I nearly didn’t get through Q1 and then things just got better and better. 

“I would say what I have been searching for with this car is to get confidence. Confidence to really send it. I know how to do the fastest lap pretty much everywhere but there are ones that it’s more natural and comes easier to connect for me corner by corner, sector by sector and this is one of them tracks. 

“With this last run, I knew I needed a tenth or so, or more, to get ahead of these guys and I just sent it. I was like nothing to lose, give it absolutely everything you’ve got. I threw it into the high speed corners trying to match their speed and hope it wasn’t too far off. It was a great, great lap.”