“Car felt alive, the lap at the end was right on the limit and I’ve got to be honest, I was a little bit disappointed that we didn’t get pole position.
“It’s one of those things, how your expectations changed so quickly in this sport. We probably would have been happy with a top four / top five yesterday, but the car felt awesome, and it goes to show we’ve definitely got potential with more still to come.”
Hamilton was similar in his pleasantly surprised reaction to how things played out.
“This is totally unexpected,” he said. “For us to be up on the two front rows is honestly a dream for us. We’re all working as hard as we can to get right back up the front and so to be this close to the Red Bull is honestly it’s incredible.
“We’re hoping for a day like the first year in 2007 in Turn 1 [that] here would be awesome [when Hamilton leapt from third to second at the start].”
Verstappen looked assured in Q1 by topping the timesheets with a 1min 17.384sec but will be the lone Milton Keynes car starting up-front after Sergio Perez dumped his RB18 into the gravel early on in the session. .
The Mexican blamed “the same “****ing problem again” on the radio as he struggled to get the car slowed on corner entry, whilst 16th-placed Oscar Piastri was also eliminated after missing out on Q2 by 0.04sec.
Joining the pair out in Q1 was Zhou Guanyu, Logan Sargeant and Valtteri Bottas in an extremely disappointing session for Alfa Romeo.
A real scrap developed for the final top-10 place in Q2, with the Williams of Albon, both Alpines and Lando Norris squabbling over entry into Q3.