Hamilton: ‘Pretty shocking’ first sector cost me Baku pole

Formula 1 championship leader Lewis Hamilton says a “pretty shocking” first sector was the key to him missing out on pole position during Azerbaijan Grand Prix qualifying.

Hamilton had led the way after the opening salvo of runs in Q3 but it was Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas who pipped him to a second consecutive pole right at the end of a dramatic session that had already seen pre-qualifying favourite Charles Leclerc crash out.

The reigning world champion turned in a scruffy first sector split before recovering time in the rest of the lap, but it was not enough as he wound up 0.059s shy of claiming pole.

“Firstly, Valtteri did an exceptional job and it was a great result for us as a team,” Hamilton said.

“Coming into the weekend it didn’t look like we had the pace. Our race pace looked good, but the pace in qualifying we thought we might not be as close as we would like to the Ferraris. But we worked on the car and improved it today.

“Unfortunately my first two corners were pretty shocking. I had a small moment in Turn 1 and then in Turn 2. So already by Turn 4 I think I was three tenths down.

“But I recovered that in the next two sectors but unfortunately it wasn’t enough, and Valtteri did a great job.”

Hamilton had been running in close formation behind Bottas on his last outlap as a queue of cars jostled to ensure they had enough of a gap before starting their respective final efforts.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said both his driver’s outlaps were compromised as a result.

“This weekend it was Lewis who could decide who was running first, and for obvious reasons he decided Valtteri should be running first,” he explained.

“But then when we were bunched up behind everybody else we didn’t expect so many cars going out right behind us, bunched up behind.

“Lewis and Valtteri’s out-laps were compromised. You can see that Lewis lost all the time in sector one and then had a really good second and third sector.”