Lewis Hamilton is feeling optimistic about his grid position ahead of Sunday’s 56-lap race at Sepang, despite making a slight mistake on his final effort in the third stage of qualifying. The McLaren driver will start the second Grand Prix of the 2011 season in second place, just behind Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel who narrowly claimed pole.
"I don’t think we can be disappointed, we have gone into the last race and did a fantastic job to even be up there with the Red Bulls," Hamilton commented. "So I feel very proud of the effort that the guys have put in, especially to get in some new parts for this weekend, and just constantly moving forward.
"I think we can be happy with it (the qualifying performance), of course I would have loved to put it in P1, but these guys (Vettel and Mark Webber) still have the slight edge.
"Clearly we have closed the gap a little bit so it seems here, and the lap wasn’t perfect. We also expected that they might have a little bit in hand, especially going into their last run.
"You just never know, they usually tend to pull something out of the bag, for which they did. They obviously picked up a little bit of pace towards the end, and going into Q3. I think for my lap we lost a little bit of time, but just only on one corner, so I can’t be too disappointed with it, you can never get it that perfect."
Further post-qualifying feelings from McLaren:
Button lamenting Q3 setup adjustment
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| Pos. | Driver | Team | Time | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  S. Vettel | Red Bull | 01:34.870 | 12 |
| 2. | L. Hamilton | McLaren | 01:34.974 | 19 |
| 3. | M. Webber | Red Bull | 01:35.174 | 17 |
| 4. | J. Button | McLaren | 01:35.200 | 15 |
| 5. | F. Alonso | Ferrari | 01:35.802 | 14 |
| 6. | N. Heidfeld | Lotus Renault | 01:36.124 | 9 |
| 7. | F. Massa | Ferrari | 01:36.251 | 13 |
| 8. | V. Petrov | Lotus Renault | 01:36.324 | 9 |
| 9. | N. Rosberg | Mercedes | 01:36.809 | 17 |
| 10. | K. Kobayashi | Sauber | 01:36.820 | 13 |
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| Lewis Hamilton | |||
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