The Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team secures the lockout in the front row for the Portuguese Grand Prix

* Valtteri took 17th pole position of his career and the first of the season.

* Lewis was 0.007 seconds behind in P2 to complete the suspension.

Valtteri Bottas
We worked hard to find out the problems I had in qualifying. We did everything right and that’s the result – it’s more like what it should be, so I’m happy. I knew the speed was there for the first two races, but my main problem was the tires warming up. We focused very much on it, we learned some lessons, and I always knew that our hard work would pay off. The key was to stay calm, carry out the plan, and focus on the small details, especially the out-laps.

We were stronger than expected, which is a positive surprise, but it’s just qualifying, I’m already thinking about tomorrow. We know the Red Bulls have a strong racing car and we expect an epic battle.

Lewis Hamilton
A session isn’t that fun because I couldn’t do that many good laps, but I’m not too frustrated. I only did one good lap and that was in the second quarter. Of course I would have liked to have done more good laps, but it was difficult out there. It’s a slippery track, the tires are hard so you have to do several laps to get the temperature up, and it’s a pretty even balance – it works for a second and then it falls off very quickly, it’s razor sharp.

It shouldn’t be, but Valtteri did a great job today and I’m just focusing on the race. Now is the time to understand tomorrow’s strategy and figure out what the odds are. It’s not an easy path to follow but we’ll see – I hope we have enough pace to fight for victory, tomorrow we go all in.

Toto Wolff
Qualifying was always our weakness in the first two races and now we’re back in front. We have seen Valtteri perform like this in the past and today was a mega day for him. But I have no doubt, as I’ve always said, he can be right up there. Tomorrow we have two Mercedes with two Red Bulls right behind them, good ingredients for a nice race!

Andrew Shovlin
Congratulations to Valtteri on his 17th pole position in his career. He looked solid in difficult conditions all weekend so this is a very deserved result. It is also a good result for the team to start in the front row with both cars – the 75th front row of the modern era for Mercedes F1.

It was a pretty difficult session; It wasn’t clear whether the medium tire or the soft tire would ultimately be the faster tire, and we also had to understand whether a preparatory lap was better than a straight for the first lap. By the time of last qualifying, nobody had come close to Lewis’ time on the medium from Q2 so we decided to hedge our bets by doing both connections. The track happened to be slowing down a lot in the final minutes so tire selection wasn’t important, but we were just grateful that we’d done enough to secure the front row. We wanted both cars to start the race with medium tires and overall we are happy that Red Bull is on the same starting tire as we have the position on the track. Our main concern will be warming up on this site, the soft runners in the third row and behind will have a grip advantage that can take a lap or two so it can be tricky.