Formula 1 championship leader Lewis Hamilton says a “pretty shocking” first sector was the key to himᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ missing out on pole position during Azerbaijan Grand Prix qual♋ifying.

Hamilton had led the way after the ▨opening salvo of runs in Q3 but it was Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas who pipped him to a second consecutive pole right at the end of a dramatic session that had already seen pre-qualifying favourite Charles Leclerc crash out.

The reigning world champion turned in a sc♈ruffy first sector split before recovering time in the rest of 💃the lap, but it was not enough as he wound up 0.059s shy of claiming pole.

“Firstly, Valtteri did an exceptional job and it w♛as a great result for us as a team,” Hamilton said.

“Coming into the weekend it didn’t look like we had the pace. Our race pace looked good, but the pace in qualifying we thought we might not be as close as we would like to th🎐e Ferraris. But we worked on the car and improve🍷d it today.

“Unfortunately my first two corners were prett🐎y shocking. I had a small moment in Turn 1 and then in Turn 2. So already by Turn 4 I think I was three tenths down.

“But I recover♕ed that in the next two sectors but unfortunately it wasn’tꦑ enough, and Valtteri did a great job.”

Hamilton had been running🅺 in close formation behind Bottas on his last outlap as a queue of cars jostled to ensure they had enough of a gap before starting their respective final efforts.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said both his driver’s outla🎃ps were comprom🐬ised as a result.

“This weekend it was Lewi𒉰s who could decide who was running fi🎐rst, and for obvious reasons he decided Valtteri should be running first,” he explained.

“But then when we were bunched up behind everybody else we didn’t expect so many cars going ಌout right behind us, bunched up behind.

“Lꦆewis and Valtteri’s out-laps were compromised. You can see that Lewis lost all the time in sector one and then had a really good sౠecond and third sector.”