Lewis Hamilton and teammate Valtteri Bottas were unable to extract pace out of their car around the streets of Baku thr💃oughout practice and looked ཧcompletely out of the picture for the pole position fight as they spent most of the sessions even struggling to feature in the top ten. 

A massive slipstream helped Hamilton to third 💫in final practice but in reality, the team was off the pace and staring at the prospect of another disastrous wꦚeekend following a lacklustre display last time out in Monaco. 

But Hamilton recovered superbly after a difficult start to the weekend to put his car on the front-row of the grid with a lap that was just two-tenths shy o𒆙f Charles Leclerc’s pole effort and, crucially, good enough to outpace his main title rival🔜 Max Verstappen. 

Hamilton labelled his second place in qualifying as a “monumental result” for Mercedes and p๊raised his team’s hard work that yielded a transformative improveꦫment in competitiveness. 

“Honestly it’s one of the greatest feelings for us,” said Hamilton. “For the difficult experience that we’ve gone through, being out of the top 1❀0 all weekend and really struggling to understand and extract performance from our car - it feels fantastic.&൲nbsp;

“It’s a bit overwhelming and I’m really happy and grateful to be here, to have got the lap in. It puts us in for a much different race than we anticipated after yesterday.&𝐆nbsp;

"I’m just really incredibly proud of the whole crew for thꦜe amazing work and being open-minded,” he added. “We made a lot of changes, there’s been so much work back at the factory overnight and then even during today.”

Ha😼milton put the turnaround - which he descri💝bed as the biggest he has experienced at Mercedes - down to pivotal changes made at the end of final practice on Saturday morning. 

“We got to P3 and it was pretty much a disaster, so it’s the biggest jump𓆏 that we’ve been able to make on an actual day between P3 and qualifying for sure,” he explained. 

“It literally was night and day, the car. But we discovered something at the end of P3 and continued to push down in that direction𝓀 and it p♎aid dividends, so I’m really happy about it.” 

Asked to explain the changes that were made to his car in FP3, Hamilton revealed a revised set-up direction helped him unlock more performance from the tyres, something that𒀰 💙had also hampered Mercedes in Monaco. 

Meanwhile, opting to complete extra warm-up laps across the three segments of qualifying aide꧙d Hamilton to get his tyres into a better working window. 

“We did some changes overnight, which didn’t rectify🥃 the🌌 issue going into today,” he said. 

“Then in P3 we tried a few different things and then just managed to🙈 try something right at the end, just with the set-up, and it unlocked the potential a bit. 

“It was really just about getting the tyres to work. We just can’t get our tyres to switch on like the others generally can, ♕so the night and difference feeling was that the tyres suddenly started working and we were kind of back in the game.” 

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff provided more insight into the thinking behind the set-up changes, saying that a final decision was only reached after a “thoroug🎀h engineering programme.”

“We were not shy of trying extreme things, which at the end were as extreme as we had 💦expected and weren't a silver bullet,” Wol🧜ff explained. 

“It was just really [about] crunching through the numbers, trying things, get💝ting the feedback of the drivers and eventually we had the car in a more decent place. 

“So it was the last run in FP3 where we t🦂ried to confirm the step and the car was there or thereabouts.” 

Mercedes’ decision to switch t𓂃o a low-downforce rear wing set-up on Hamilton’s car ahead of qualifying also paid dividends, having initially trialed a higher-downforce-spec in FP3. 

This gave Hamilton a crucial straight-line speed boost, which proved especially effective when he benefited from♉ running in Bottas’ tow on the first flying l🔴aps of Q3. 

Hamilton admitted the tweaks left h𝔉im feeling anxious because he feared the team might have taken the wrong 🅷direction. 

“It’s difficult for us to understand why we’re in the position we’re in, because we’r♑e trying lots of different things and we don’t always get the results that you’re expecting to get,” the Briton said. 

♕“No matter what we’re doing we couldn’t really fix it. So from my point of view, I’m pushing the guys like ‘I want to try this, I want to try that’. 

“ꦅI had a lot of anxiety♊ because I don’t know if you’re going to get it right, or get it wrong and it means that you’re out of the top 10 like we were earlier this morning and then yesterday. 

“You just have to let it go. We were here last night till 11 o’clock and again for the session 10 minutes ju♉st before we’re still making small changes and we just ꦛhave to shake it off and go all out.

“🎃It’s an amazing feeling. I think we’ve got the right balance. Do we have the pe🍬rfect wing? I’m sure you could always say you could have a slightly better balance, but it did the job today.”

In stark contrast to Hamilton, Bottas was only capable of claiming 10th on the grid, leaving tᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚhe Finn adamant something wasn’t quite right with his Mercedes W12.&nbs𒁃p;

But Wolff refuted suggestions that the team had effecti﷽vely sacrificed Bottas to assist Hamilton’s bid to challenge꧒ for an unlikely pole in Baku. 

“Since the beginning of the joint journey of Valtteri and Lewis, we have 🥀tossed a coin who would have the choice to decide if they were running first or second,” he said. 

“And this weekend it was Lewis' turn to choose whether he runs first or second on the road and he chose secon꧑d obviously. So this is the same system. It alternates from race to race between the drivers.”

After producing some encouraging lap ♏times during the race-pace simulations on Friday afternoon, Hamilton is optimistic that he should be competitive on Sunday.

“Our race pace was a lot better than th🅰e single-lap pace,” he said. 

“We were miles off in a single lap and we were a lot closer in race pace. We don’t understand why, ☂but🐻 I like to think hopefully we are in that same position.

“We weren’t as quick as 🍒the Red Bulls but we are in the mix so I think to🅺morrow we should be close to these guys, hopefully.” 

Wolff agreed with Hamilton’s assessment, adding: “The long runs were very good. I would say yesterday they were on the same pace as the Red ꦓBull🎃s. 

“Soꩵ I think we have a decent shot at a good result tomorrow.”