Mercedes swapped chassis betw♈een Hamilton and teammate Valtteri Bottas heading into the we🤪ekend to help balance out mileage between the two cars, but suspicions were raised about the change given Hamilton’s struggles to match Bottas throughout the three practice sessions.

The seven-time world champion recovered strongly in qualifying as he secured a spot on the front-🦂row of the grid, two-tenths down on Max Verstappen’s stunning benchmark and one position ahead of Bottas.

Speaking tꦕo Sky presenter and ex-F1 driver Paul di Resta in the post-quali🏅fying interviews in parc ferme, Hamilton said: “I saw you coming up with some myth and so I was happy to be able to prove it wrong.

“The quality ꧅of our engineers work',🐈 all the cars are exactly the same.”

Expanding on the chassis change later in the FIA press conference, Hamilton added: “It’s basically tꦅhe same cockpit with your own settings.

“Both the cars 𒁏are built around us, so normally you are not su🧔pposed to feel any difference. Of course, we made changes and it’s been a difficult weekend, and of course you start to wonder at some stage whether there are any differences, but look at that result.

“We just got a gre♌at result today and that just shows that its all🍸 the same. It’s normal that we rotate, we do that anyways.”

Hamilton admitted it had been a “really hard weekend mentally” after his early pace stru🎶ggles, revealing a number of ch🌼anges were key to his qualifying turnaround.

“You🦋 wouldn’t believe how many changes I’ve madꦯe since practice one,” he explained.

“Going round and round, chasing the tail, ending up🐷 coming back to something similar to where we started. Generally, I’ve been unhappy in the car all weekend.

"Congratulations to Max, he did a great job today,” Hamilton added. "They’ve been incredibly quick. You see they have a new engine for this weekend, not a new spec or anything as fa🅘r I am aware.

“They’re quick down the straights. I think it was a lot of time down the straights today. We’ve got a race on our hands aꦆnd we’re loving the battle. We are going to keep pus🗹hing, keep fighting and giving it everything.”