F1 | Fastest ever F1 lap felt ‘awesome’ says Hamilton as he claims 7th Monza pole

Hamilton’s final effort in Q3 saw him lap Monza in 1m 18.887s, to beat Kimi Raikkonen’s previous track record – and previous fastest F1 lap – by a full 0.232s, with Valtteri Bottas taking P2 for Mercedes, just 0.069s adrift, to give the team their first front row lock-out here since 2016.

“It was not too bad!” said Hamilton after the session. “I’m generally really happy with the actual laps I did. Valtteri was very, very close, pushing. I made some big changes going in to qualifying, so I was a little bit nervous going in that it was the right thing to do but it worked just fine.  —more—