Hamilton had to ‘drive the nuts off’ his F1 car to secure Portugal pole

Lewis Hamilton says he had to "drive the nuts off” his Mercedes Formula 1 car to come from behind and grab a late pole position for the Portuguese Grand Prix.

Hamilton had trailed teammate Valtteri Bottas all weekend and looked like he would suffer a rare qualifying defeat to the Finn this season until he pulled out a last-gasp effort by completing an extra run on Medium tyres to snatch pole by 0.102s.

The Briton admitted he had to dig deep to pull out his late performance and secure the 97th pole position of his career.

“I can’t tell you how hard that was today,” said Hamilton. “Yes, we’ve got a great car, but you have to drive the nuts off of it to pull out the lap.

“Valtteri’s been so quick this weekend, he’s topped every session, so I’ve just been digging and digging and digging and trying to find that extra time.

“At the end there, I chose to do three laps to give me chance at having a stab at beating [Valtteri’s] time.

“I think he decided to do one and I was like, this could give me an opportunity and it worked. That last lap, it got better and better as I went through it.”

And Hamilton is expecting another tough battle in the race as he aims to set a new record for most wins in F1.

The six-time world champion, who equalled Michael Schumacher’s benchmark of 91 last time out at the Nurburgring, is braced for a close fight with Bottas and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who once again kept the Mercedes duo honest in qualifying.

“In qualifying they’ve had a good upgrade at the last race or the one before that and they’ve bene getting closer and closer through the weekends,” Hamilton said of Red Bull’s recent gains.

“This is the closest we’ve been. We’ve not brought any upgrades to our car for a bit of time now, but hopefully that continues on this trend as these next races go and then when we get to the race they’re a lot closer.

“The last race I was having to seriously push to keep Max at a distance and not get into my DRS zone, so we should have a good race with these six left.”