Missing out on a record seventh pole at his home race by just 0.006s, many felt that a mistake on his first run in Q3 affected Lewis Hamilton's latter assault, however the Briton says the changeable weather conditions played a part as well as feeling that the pace of his W10 deteriorated throughout the session.

"The set-up suits the race trim best and yesterday we really did struggle with it on a single lap," he said. "Of course we are trying to improve it over the evening and into today although it felt great going into FP3 and it felt really good at the start of the qualifying session.

"But it actually deteriorated as we got through the session," he admitted, "it got harder, and harder, it went back towards to the similar problems to what we had yesterday.

"It is also windy," he explained, "but the race trim is still good and I didn't want to move from the set-up that I had, or too far away, because it worked well on the long run yesterday. So, fingers crossed, the pace in the race should be quite good but again it depends on the position we are in and how the wind is and other factors."

Asked if his early mistake compromised his second run, he said; "It doesn't really matter at the end of the day as you can't go back, all you can do is look forward and Valtteri did the job so congratulations to him.

"It wasn't the best of qualifying sessions. It is a long race tomorrow so we will see how we can convert the position I am to progress forward. I think the long run yesterday was good so I hope that I am able to utilise the tyre advantage we have starting on the mediums. We will try to do a good job tomorrow."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Silverstone, here.