That's exactly the sort of challenge we enjoy though; we have the opportunity to fight for the Sprint win, and we'll be going for it.
We know we have all the ingredients we need to have a strong race and we'll do everything we can to maximise the result," said Kimi Antonelli.
His teammate George Russell qualified in fifth position and acknowledged that the team lacked the pace of the frontrunners.
"We've often managed to find a step when it comes to the final part of qualifying, but unfortunately that wasn't the case today.
We weren't too far off P3, but we were still lacking a bit of pace compared to Kimi (Antonelli) and Lewis (Hamilton), so we need to understand where we can improve.
The car didn't feel too bad and the balance was reasonably good but ultimately the lap time just wasn't there when it mattered.
I was a little bit surprised by Ferrari's pace as, on paper, this wouldn't necessarily be their strongest circuit.
Clearly, they have made a strong step forward and they looked competitive throughout the day.
They had the upper hand from the first session onwards, so we've got some work to do overnight to see if we can close that gap and put ourselves in the fight tomorrow," said George Russell.
Meanwhile, the Formula Two championship featured a dominant weekend from Bulgaria's Nikola Toslov, who completed a sprint and feature race double to extend his championship lead over Gabriele Mini to 17 points, while Irishman Alex Dunne finished the feature race in fourth place.
Sprint Qualifying Classification: 1. Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) 1:28.376, 2.
Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes-AMG) 1:28.387, 3. Max Verstappen (Red Bull) 1:28.697, 4.
Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) 1:28.703, 5. George Russell (Mercedes-AMG) 1:28.733, 6.
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Lando Norris (McLaren) 1:28.740, 7. Oscar Piastri (McLaren) 1:28.772.
