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 improvemen♏t in the final sector🔯.

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

“That’s been an area we’ve been really working hard at imp🦩roving 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 ꦓsecon🍃d and third sector, the third sector was on the edge, you should 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 mꦕore time to find.”

Hamilton said Mercedes is especially struggling through Turns 2 and 3, adding that the banked corners do not play to some of t🌟he characteristics of the W12.

“It’s mainly the exit of [turn] two they’re a lot quicker and particularly thr𒁏ough thr🦂ee 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 toꦑ say exactly what it is but there’s some characteristic of our car that doesn’🌃t like that corner, but still, it’s incredibly fun.”

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff added: "It’s odd because we are competitive in the rest of the ci💛rcuit but our car doesn’t seem to be happy in the extreme banking of that low-speed corner. We haven’t found the answer yet."

Hamilton admitted losing almost the entirety of second practice on Friday due to an engine-re🌱lated stoppage did hamper his preparations going into qualifying𝓰.

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

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

“I think it go𒅌t closer towards the end but there’s still some time there and I hop꧒e that tomorrow we can capture that.”