British Grand Prix: Lewis Hamilton beats Kimi Antonelli to pole for Silverstone sprint race

The packed grandstands of about 150,000 fans cheered Hamilton raucously as he crossed the line and moved ahead of Antonelli.

Hamilton said: “Wow. OK. I like it. I love this place. I love this crowd. I can’t express to you how big a dream it is, and the flow you can get into around this place if you can get the set-up in the right place.

“We’re ahead of Mercedes. They have so much power, these guys. We did not expect we would be competing for the front row, so it’s an amazing surprise. I’m ecstatic.”

Ferrari had a difficult race last weekend in Austria, despite Hamilton taking his first win for his new team in Barcelona the race before that, but the seven-time champion said some small upgrades to the car had helped them get back on top.

“We brought some tiny bits here,” he said. “I am really pleased to get pole. It was only 10 milliseconds or something like that and the team really deserve it.”

Leclerc was 0.327secs behind Hamilton and said he was still trying to understand why he was not finding himself as comfortable in the new car as his team-mate.

“Lewis is more often at 100% of the potential of the car, which I’m not,” Leclerc said. “I have to work on everything, really.

“I am struggling to be consistent at my 100%. I just don’t feel the car as well as I want.

“We are extremely surprised in general. We were expecting a much bigger gap to the cars in front.”