Morning After: Another stonker from Lewis

Another Saturday, another stonker from Lewis Hamilton.

As has usually been the case this season, the story of Saturday was once again a hard-fought battle between Mercedes and Ferrari until the very last, when Hamilton pulled a scintillating lap out of his backside to secure pole position.

Finishing 0.242s ahead of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, the record won’t show it to be the most dominant lap of Hamilton’s 2017 season, but considering the former had the benefit of a tow from teammate Kimi Raikkonen through sector 3, it has to be in the mix.

It’s only fitting that such a lap would be the one to bring him level with Michael Schumacher on the all-time pole positions list, made all the more impressive by the fact it took him 108 less races.

Still, with Hamilton on top and Vettel right beside him, the stage is set once more for an enthralling Sunday. Add to that the ever-ominous presence of the P3 Max Verstappen, the on-form Kimi Raikkonen starting P4, and room for plenty of variation in tyre strategy, the potential is there for an absolute cracker.

Deserving of much of the criticism thrown his way this season, it’s only fair to credit Jolyon Palmer when he’s earned it – and that he did on Saturday.

With seemingly everyone inside and outside the paddock marking off the days until he is replaced at Renault, Palmer put in his strongest performance of the season to convincingly outpace teammate Nico Hulkenberg through the first two qualifying sessions, before a problem with his gearbox’s oil pressure ended his running in Q3. Of course, one solid Saturday isn’t going to make up for his entire season, but for a man who has been outdriven by his teammate with a regularity that would make Taki Inoue blush, it represents a remarkable turnaround. Maybe the best of Palmer is yet to come – assuming Renault allows us to see it, that is.

Fernando Alonso losing power because his energy deployment system couldn’t believe he took Pouhon flat-out is the most McLaren-Honda thing to happen all season, and that’s really saying something.

The rough going continues for Williams, who weren’t even in the class of the McLarens, let alone rivals Force India.

Per motorsport.com’s Jonathan Noble, Pirelli have been investigating the “strange tyre deformation” observed on several cars during qualifying. As of yet no action is being taken, but that could change by race time.

With rain falling during the long runs on Friday, this made it quite hard to fully assess the tyre degradation. On the basis of our assumptions, the thoretical quickest pit-stop strategies predicted by Pirelli are as follows:

THE FASTEST One-stopper: 1 stint on ultrasoft for 14 laps + 1 stint on soft to the flag

THE SECOND FASTEST One-stopper: 1 stint on supersoft for 17 laps + 1 stint on soft to the flag

SLIGHTLY SLOWER Two-stopper: 1 stint on ultrasoft (10 laps) + 2 stints on supersoft (17+17 laps)

Different permutations of compound usage within each strategy are possible.