Lewis Hamilton in positive mood as he labels Mercedes car a 'viper'

Lewis Hamilton admitted he was pleased enough with his qualifying performance for the Australian Grand Prix, despite labelling his car ‘spiteful’ and a ‘viper’.

The Briton may well have been feeling a little trepidation going into this weekend in Melbourne, after a tough Grand Prix last time out around the streets of Jeddah.

Indeed, it’s clear that there are still prominent issues with the Silver Arrows’ W13 at the moment, and on Friday it looked as though Lewis might be off of the pace once again with him finishing outside of the top 10 in FP2 – a session that is similar in nature to qualifying.

However, come quali itself earlier today in Melbourne, things seemed to be a little brighter in the Briton’s car with him and George Russell both finishing inside the top six and looking forward to mixing it up near the front of the field.

Admittedly, Hamilton says that there is still work to do but he was pleased enough with the job he did manage in a car he described as spiteful if you push it too far.

“I think Jeddah was really tough to be so far back and not make any progress and yesterday was a difficult day,” he said to Sky.

“But we worked hard overnight and back at the factory to figure out where we can go with the set-up and I think we extracted the most from the car today.

“I think in my lap there was a little bit more in the car so that’s a positive, naturally I’m also gutted I wasn’t able to extract that little bit more but the problem is when you push this car it’s quite spiteful like a viper or a rattlesnake – you never know!

“We just have to try and find a level of the bouncing as hardcore as we can go without rattling the brains out of our skulls.

“[George Russell] and I have slightly different cars because we’re