Lewis Hamilton secured the all-time record for pole positions as he took top spot in an extremely wet qualifying session at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza on Saturday.
The Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team racer’s sixty-ninth pole position broke the record of Michael Schumacher that he equalled just one week ago, and he did so by over a second, finishing 1.148 seconds faster than Max Verstappen.
Hamilton admitted it was hard to put into words how it felt to break Schumacher’s record, which was completed in conditions the German worked wonders in himself, with the Briton saying it would have been easy to make a mistake during the session.
“It’s very hard to find the words to explain how I feel, I’m trying to figure it all out,” said Hamilton. “It probably won’t sink in for a long time. It was an epic day, I feel truly blessed.
“The Red Bulls really made me work hard for the pole today, which I’m grateful for. The weather has obviously been incredibly tricky for us all. What a day to come here in this beautiful country with the English weather and to be massively challenged.
“It was very difficult to see out there, and very easy to make mistakes – as always in the rain. The second to last lap was ok at the beginning, but then I backed out of it, hoping that I’d get one more lap. There was a lot of pressure for that last lap – there could have been a red flag, there could have been a yellow flag. There was a lot of risk, but I gave it everything.”
