Max Verstappen clung on to secure pole and delight his home crowd despite a late challenge from Hamilton, who ended up just 0.038s adrift on his final flying lap of Q3, having produced a mighty improvement in th♏e final sector.

Hamilton explained that Mercedes is losing the most time to Red Bull in the opening sector of the lap, with the seven-time world champion admitting “Max has꧑ been incredibly fast through the first sector”.

“That’s been an area we’ve been really working har♈d at improving the car balance overnight and through P3 into qualifying, just slowly chipping away at it,” Hamilton explained. “It’s a circuit where you need to continually chip away and build that confidence.

“The lap, particularly the second and third sector, the third sector was on the edge, you shoul✃d have seen the last corner, there wasn’t any road left, so I was really really happy with it.

“I think it’s great we were able🃏 to get that close because they pulled quite far ahead at one point pace-wise. But I still🌱 think if we had another session, again, we’d all go quicker and there’s more time to find.”

Hamilton said Mercedes is especia🐟lly struggling through Turns 2 and 3, adding that the banked corners do not play to some of the characteristics of the W12.

“It’s 𝓰mainly the exit of [turn] two they’re a lot quicker and particularly through three they’re a lot quicker,” he said.

“Even on that lap, it’s something close to two-tenths that we’re losing in that area. It’s difficult to say exactly what it is but there’s some characteristic of 𒉰our car that doesn’t 💛like that corner, but still, it’s incredibly fun.”

Mercedes boss T🅺oto Wolff added: "It’s odd because we are competitive in the rest of the circuit but our car doesn’t seem to be happy in the extreme banking of that l๊ow-speed corner. We haven’t found the answer yet."

Hamilton admitted losing almost the entirety of se𒉰cond practice on Friday du🎃e to an engine-related stoppage did hamper his preparations going into qualifying.

“I think also time in the car to just chip away at it, to continue to try different lines - obviously, there wa💯s a lot of time lost yesterday,” Hamilton said.

"I lost a w✅hole ꧃session so I didn’t really get that practice or get the car where I needed it to be. Fortunately, Valtteri did some great work yesterday setup wise so that gave us some guidance.

“I think it got closer 🦂towards the end but there’s still some time there and I hope that tomorrow we can capture that.”