Hamilton: Silverstone qualifying "like juggling balls whilst you're on a moving plate"

Lewis Hamilton revelled in the gusty Silverstone conditions to secure the 91st pole position of his Formula 1 career.

Despite spinning in Q2 and causing a brief moment of panic on the Mercedes pit wall, Hamilton was able to recover to land his seventh British Grand Prix pole.

"This track is just awesome because with the gusting wind you have a head-wind, tail-wind and cross-wind at different parts of the circuit," said Hamilton. "It's like juggling balls whilst you're on a moving plate and at high speed."

While Q3 was near-perfect, Q2 was anything but given the spin that caused a red flag as Hamilton's W11 sprayed gravel across the circuit.

"Qualifying is a lot about confidence-building and damn, I had that spin," explained Hamilton.

"I was already down through the first section every lap and I don't know how but, with some deep breaths [I] managed to compose myself.

"Q3 started off the right way. It still wasn't perfect the first lap but was still a really clean lap, and the second one even better."

Hamilton's time of one minute 24.303secs was three-tenths of a second clear of Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas, seven-tenths ahead of the Finn's lap record from last season's qualifying, and a second up on third-on-the-grid Max Verstappen.

The six-time F1 champion added: "There's a relatively big gap obviously between us and third place but that doesn't matter.

"At the end of the day, Valtteri is pushing me right to the limit, and he's been doing such a fantastic job all weekend."

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