Mercedes has revealed that it focussed on Lewis Hamilton's race pace as opposed to seeking a higher grid slot for the seven-time world champion.

Shocked after topping the timesheets on Thursday evening, the seven-time world champion was equally taken aback 24 hours later, but for different reasons, having qualified ninth, 0.531s off Max Verstappen's pole-winning time and 0.225s adrift of his Mercedes teammate.

However the German squad subsequently revealed that rather than seeking to move Hamilton closer to the front of the grid it had concentrated its efforts on his race pace.

"Yesterday it looked better but we put the car in a sweet spot for tomorrow's race, at least this is what we hope," said Toto Wolff. "I think the set up changes that we made, they contributed to less performance today," he continued. "At the beginning of the qualifying we thought 'Oh, maybe we've taken too much performance off, sacrificed for tomorrow's race' but then at the end we got it quite OK with George.

"Tomorrow should be better," he added, "but we are still learning about this car."

"The car is really fantastic," said Hamilton, "it is a really big improvement from the previous years, a lot more stable, a lot more fun to drive.

"We still have work to do as you can see," he added. "But for George to be three tenths off Max, it's incredible. I think George's position is a testament to the job everyone has done at the factory and finally giving us a car that we can fight with.

"You could say the one I was on was not good on a single lap," said the Briton in reference to the alternate set-up his team had given him for qualifying. "I hope that it's good in the race."

"We could have had a car fighting Max," said Wolff, "but I don't think we could have fought Max tomorrow," he added, referring to Hamilton, "because it was so new.

"We shall see if the set-up direction we consciously went for is going to really have a positive effect tomorrow on the race car. And if not, we have another learning stint."

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