Hamilton: Nico did a great job and I didn't have the pace

Lewis Hamilton's run of top spot starts came to an end when Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg powered to pole position for the Spanish Grand Prix, the world champion had no excuses and simply acknowledged that the German did a better job on the day.

Hamilton said afterwards, "I generally didn’t have the pace today. Nico did a great job and generally I don’t know if I really had the balance where I like it. I did my best with it and I think tomorrow there’s still a lot to play for."

It appeared throughout the free practice sessions that Hamilton was not quite in the zone, and acknowledged that he was not totally satisfied with the balance of his car.

“I’ve been tweaking it through the weekend, but didn’t really like the balance in the end. I did the best I could with it,” he told media. “It’s more rear end [of the car]. I was just sitting with my engineer and looking at the data and sometimes it’s understeer and sometimes it’s oversteer. But sometimes understeer does lead to oversteer!"

"I didn’t really have any problems with the front-end, I just couldn’t really lean on the rear as it was moving a lot," explained the double world champion. "Naturally, with that you move the mechanical balance forwards, but then you have understeer! So it’s a real fine line. It’s been the same all weekend and I’ve been chasing it.”

Rosberg appears to have raised his game after playing second fiddle for the first four races, which suggests that the two rivals since boyhood will go head-to-head as they did last year.

Hamilton revealed, “The policy is the same as it was last year. We are allowed to race. The guy who’s in the lead gets the optimum strategy and the guy who’s behind gets a slightly different one. So it’s down to you to utilise it and make up for the disadvantage of being behind."

Hamilton has won three of the four races thus far this season, with Rosberg yet to open his win account and as a result the race in Spain is crucial for his F1 world championship title ambitions. Hamilton leads the standings by 27 points.