George Russell was convinced that Lewis Hamilton “could have got the pole position” for the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, but while the Ferrari driver wasn’t certain either way the “half-a-tenth to a tenth” he potentially lost early in his final lap might have swung a battle decided by 0.064 seconds in his favour.

Hamilton struggled throughout practice, saying he was on the back foot but then became delighted with the feel and the pace of the Ferrari from the start of qualifying.

That allowed him to fight for pole position, with the first sector of his final flying lap in Q3 a little slower than his best previous effort in qualifying (21.886s v 21.873s) but followed by personal bests in the final two sectors.

While that first sector was only 0.013s slower, you would have expected Hamilton to make a step from that previous best, which was set on his initial attempt at a Q3 lap before aborting thanks to the red flag caused by team-mate Charles Leclerc’s crash.

Asked by The Race about the time lost in Turn 1 and whether it might have been enough to cost him pole position, Hamilton explained that it was partly a consequence of the previous lap he completed, on the same set of tyres that he’d taken the best out of with that aborted lap, which left him guessing how much speed he could take into Turn 1.

He attempted to take in a little too much speed, and while he didn’t miss the apex by a big margin, that meant he ran wide and compromised him through the first two corners and therefore cost him speed into the long Turn 3 right hander.

“I need to go look at the data, I haven't seen the sectors, but basically, we were in the garage, because we went out and started the first lap,” said Hamilton. “With the red flag, we came in, I think I did basically the whole first sector, I think these guys [Russell and Kimi Antonelli] maybe didn’t get the whole sector in so the tyres were a bit fresher.

“We had a big debate in the garage, they put on new tyres and we're going to wait to do one lap, and I was saying to them that I want to go out on this tyre and get at least a reference lap in. And they're like, ‘no, no, no, let's just go out for one’. And I was like, ‘no, take those new tyres off, put the reference ones on’.

“Then we went out and the tyres had dropped off significantly already. From one lap to the next lap it's usually around half a second to eight tenths or something like that, so they had already dropped off half a second. I was happy I got that whether or not they were right or not.

“So when I went into turn one, I just gunned it. I probably went in too deep, I had massive understeer and went quite wide on the exit of one, which meant two was slower than normal. So half-a-tenth to a tenth, I would assume, but I'll look at the data and maybe I’m wrong.”

Whether or not this small error cost him pole position is difficult to say conclusively, but it certainly could have done. However, Hamilton set the fastest second sector time of all, meaning that at the braking point for Turn 10 at the end of the back straight he was around seven-hundredths up on Russell.

However, Hamilton lost 0.134s to Russell in the final sector, carrying less apex speed through the left-hand Turn 10 hairpin - where Hamilton ran wide and suffered a snap of oversteer - but then clawing it back and building a small advantage of just half-a-tenth approaching the final corner.

However, on the power Russell was significantly faster and the battle swung decisively in his favour.

But regardless of the what ifs, it doesn’t alter the fact that Ferrari’s performance came not only as a surprise to the watching world, but also Hamilton after what he called a “very tricky weekend for me personally”. Having sat out FP1 to allow Dino Beganovic to run, Hamilton struggled in the second and third practice sessions.

As a result, he “needed to make a huge leap going into qualifying” but big gains made in terms of rear grip and therefore his confidence behind the wheel meant he was rapid from the start of qualifying, setting the pace in Q1.

That was a result of improvements for both Ferraris, with Hamilton indicating he and team-mate Leclerc “basically had the exact same set-up”.

Hamilton pointed out that all drivers benefit from having the rear-end grip, but historically he has particularly thrived with consistent and confidence-inspiring rear grip, which allows him to drive in a way that has not always been possible during his time with Ferrari to date.

“Honestly, I couldn’t believe once I came around and was P1 in Q1, the gap was so big,” said Hamilton. “I was thinking all weekend ‘why am I half-a-second off?’ I was just down everywhere; struggled through Turn 3, struggled through Turn 9 and having that confidence in that high-speed. But the engineers did a great job with the small adjustments on the set-up.

“For the first time ever, I left the track between P3 and qualifying. I said, “I’ve got to get out of here.” I went back to my motorhome and I was just on the engineer call, just on my phone, but I kind of went where I had a bit of a reset, came back and I was able to somehow get back on it. So yeah, whatever it did, it worked.”

Having come so close to his first grand prix pole position for Ferrari (he took sprint pole in China in 2025), is victory possible?

Given the Ferrari is strong off the line there's a chance of getting ahead of Russell at the start, and while it's difficult to judge Ferrari's race pace given how big a step was made from Friday practice Hamilton isn't giving up on a shot at victory.

"It definitely will be challenging without my team-mate within the group, but it's been done before, " said Hamilton.

"It's a long way down to Turn 1 for the one on the dirty side, which is not the greatest. These guys [Mercedes] were really quick on the long runs, as they have been all year, so I have no idea of whether I'll be able to keep up. We’ll find out tomorrow. "

Mercedes is certainly clear favourite, but after the near-miss in qualifying Ferrari and Hamilton can at least realistically hope to have some say in the battle at the front in the early stages. And with at least a two-stop race expected, that will put them in the mix.