The seven-time world champion’🐟s wait to become F1’s first everꦅ pole centurion was made to go on after Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas pipped him to the fastest time in Q3 by just 0.007s.

Hamilton had set a lap that was 0.4s quicker than Bottas’ pole time in the second part of꧟ qualifying,🐎 but when it mattered in the Q3 shootout he came out second best.

“It was a difficult seꦡssion,” Hamilton acknowledg꧒ed.

“I think for everyone, it’s not that easy here, particularly as it is windy and quite slippery on this su♏rface so it was challenging for everyone.

“ꦚQuite a messy session for me really. Q1 wasn’t good, Q2 I only had one good lap and I would say in the whole session, I only had one good lap,

“Q3 wasꦰ pretty poor. Valtteri did a great job in the conditions 🐓we’re in.”

Mercedes and Red Bull opted f𝄹or different strategies for the final runs of Q3 as Bottas and Hamilton ran on Mediums - mirroring their Q2 attempts - while Verstappen and teammate Sergio Perez were on Softs.

After neither Mercedes driver was able to im🐽prove on their final flying laps in the low-grip conditions, Hamilton conceded it was probably the wrong decision.

“It probably🎶 wasn’t the right decisi💞on at the end,” he said.

“It was just tricky out there, you saw us doing multiple laps. The tyres are too hard here, so the♚y don’t work really well with the surface so we have to do extra laps to get temperature in.

“At the end I just didn’t have g𓄧reat grip, so didn’t do the greatest job.”