Hamilton eyeballs Alonso’s 2nd place as Mercedes aim high in the race

Lewis Hamilton is confident that his machinery is good enough to top the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso.

In a tricky condition in qualifying the Spaniard pipped the Mercedes duo to second place, but the Brackley team believes it has the race pace to overhaul the 41-year-old.

“Not bad at all.” Hamilton said.

“This is a good start for us, I think. It was the most difficult conditions out there, trying to get the temperature into the tires, as obviously there’s not many high-speed corners so it’s difficult to generate temperature.”

“I hope that we can compete with Alonso. It will be interesting to see how our long run [performance] is, but it would be good to have a battle with him.”

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Meanwhile, Russel was equally enthusiastic about his team’s prospects.

“I think there was a bit more there,” he said. “We definitely performed better when the track was drier, then when the track got wetter in Q3, the car wasn’t quite as competitive. To be honest, when I crossed the line I was surprised to end up in that position.”

“It’s a good place to start for tomorrow, the race pace is good, we’ve only Fernando in front of us, who I think will be our challenger. Max is obviously going to be probably in a league of his own out there tomorrow – let’s bring it on.”