Lewis Hamilton praised his Mercedes team for improving his W08 chassis after a low-key Friday in Baku turned into a sensational pole on Saturday.
Hamilton finished almost 0.5s clear of teammate Valtteri Bottas, and 1.1s ahead of the third-placed Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen, with a lap time that stunned even his own team.
“I wouldn’t say I was surprised by the lap time.” he said. “I hadn’t really thought about what we could do here, but I would say definitely yesterday we were at a bit of a loss as we started in the wrong place, and we had to make a lot of changes overnight.