Hamilton braced for “tough” F1 battle with Verstappen

Lewis Hamilton expects Max Verstappen to be a serious contender for the victory at the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona.

Hamilton stormed to a 92nd career pole position ahead of Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas, with Verstappen qualifying in third - just over seven-tenths off the pace.

With hot temperatures once again expected in the race, Hamilton is wary of the threat Verstappen will pose given Red Bull’s advantage when it comes to looking after its tyres over a race distance.

“Tomorrow is going to be tough when we get to the race the scenario is different,” Hamilton said. “I think over a single lap we seem to have the edge over the Red Bulls but I think this weekend we’re pretty much on par when it comes to race pace so it’s going to be a tough battle with Max tomorrow.”

Mercedes struggled considerably with tyre blistering at last weekend’s 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, where it was beaten to the win by Verstappen.

While Hamilton doesn’t expect to have the same issues today, he is cautious about how Mercedes will fare due to the hot track temperatures.

“I expect these guys to be probably a little bit better, I would imagine,” Hamilton added. “It’s definitely not going to be easy for us. I don’t think we’ll have the same problems we had last week, obviously we;’ll find out in the race.

“But we’ve got those hot conditions but we have a harder compound so fingers crossed that helps. But yeah I wouldn’t put it past us having problems tomorrow but we’ll wait and see.”

Team-mate Bottas concurred with Hamilton and doesn’t expect to suffer with the same blistering as in Silverstone but thinks Red Bull will once again hold the advantage when it comes to tyre management.

“I think we are expecting fewer issues than last weekend, just because it’s a different kind of track and, so far, we’ve seen no issues with blistering or the other things we’ve seen happening in Silverstone,” Bottas said.

“I think here the issue is always the tyre surfaces overheats and we have to manage that. Yes, we’ve seen Red Bull is pretty strong when it’s warm and when it’s all about tyre management. Hopefully we’ll be better off than in Silverstone.”

Mercedes F1 team boss Toto Wolff has labelled Verstappen as the "favourite" for victory in Spain.