'A real chance against Ferrari' - George Russell and Lewis Hamilton expect Spanish Grand Prix improvement from Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton, George Russell and Toto Wolff celebrated their qualification success at the Spanish Grand Prix. Russell took fourth place and Hamilton sixth, which would not appear to be a dramatic improvement on previous weeks but the team appear to be confident that their race pace will be a challenge for other teams.

Ad/> Speaking after Saturday’s qualifying in Barcelona, Hamilton praised his engineering team for the work they had done to improve the performance. Spanish Grand PrixLeclerc on pole for Spanish Grand Prix3 HOURS AGO “The team have done such a great job, big thank you to everyone who is pushing back at the factory because we don’t have bouncing on the straight line, which is a huge improvement for us, and the car has generally been nicer this weekend,” he began.

“We do have some bouncing through the high-speed corners, but we just need to keep working away on that and see if we can gain a bit more downforce elsewhere. I am a little bit gutted because I want to be farther ahead, and obviously George has been able to get further ahead than I, but I'll keep pushing.

“Yesterday was like our best race pace we’ve had, if we can start racing with the Ferraris that would be amazing. I think the Red Bulls might be quicker.” Leclerc on pole for Spanish Grand Prix Leclerc fastest ahead of Verstappen in final practice, Hamilton fourth Haas 'remain confident' Schumacher to take part in Spanish GP qualifying despite fire Russell meanwhile hoped that there would be more to come from the car on Sunday compared to the qualifying performance.

/> “It wasn’t actually our most perfect qualifying session,” he claimed. “We didn’t have the tires in the right window and I felt like there was a lot more lap time on the table, yet