Lewis Hamilton restores Mercedes' dominance with pole position ahead of Sebastian Vettel at Spanish Grand Prix

Both Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel have stressed that it will be the little things that determine the destiny of the 2017 FIA Formula 1 World Championship. And nothing illustrated that more graphically than their battle in qualifying at Montmelo on Saturday afternoon.

Had Hamilton not made the best of windy conditions and achieved an excellent first-run lap of 1m 19.149s, would he have annexed the 64th pole position of his career and the crucially important starting place on the grid?

Had Vettel not decided not to switch off his engine when instructed to do so by his engineers at the start of the qualifying session, or had he not waited sufficiently to follow that instruction so that he went past the first turn-out he could have take to place his car in a protective position by the side of the track, he might not then have detected that his engine was actually okay.

It had been changed once that morning, by routine, and once again when the replacement developed a water leak. By deciding to wait that little bit longer, he discovered that all was actually well and lived to fight for pole and to join Hamilton on the front row, instead of starting from the back of the grid.

The little things. You get the picture.

Mercedes and Ferrari brought new goodies to make their cars go faster, and both seemed to make exactly the same size step forwards.

There was a lot of allusion to Jedi knights and the Starship Enterprise in today’s media conference, much of it concerning the unusual shapes brought here as part of Mercedes’ aerodynamic improvements. Vettel admitted he is not a big fan of either intergalactic icons.

“I’m happy with the bits we bought,” he said, adding as if slightly seeking to put down his rivals, “They are not as flashy and bling, but they are working.”

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Hamilton, as he so often does (and, indeed, as does Vettel) paid tribute to the factory workforce in Brackley who have prepared all the new bits that helped his Silver Arrow to fly even faster.

“The team have brought a really great package here,” he said. “It’s quality rather than quantity, though perhaps a more visible package, and it’s strange that after we’d both bolted all our bits on, we were still within half a tenth of each other.”

The British champion is back on form after his upset in Russia, after working with his engineers to hone his car’s set-up. He was fastest on Friday, and again when it mattered through qualifying. Vettel, by contrast, admitted that he was a bit lost yesterday, that he felt like a captain who wasn’t sailing his own ship.

“I wasn’t happy at all,” he said. “I could feel what the car had there, but I just couldn’t get to it. Today, it was just phenomenal. And the team were phenomenal, the way they changed the engine after the problem with a water leak this morning. It’s a three-hour job and they did it sub-two hours. I was ready to fire up for Q1. It was quite funny, because Kimi’s crew [his team-mate, Raikkonen’s] helped out. There was on car on one side of the garage with only two people working on it, and on the other side was this car with people all over it like bees.

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“We had an issue that turned out not to be a problem; I’m blind in that moment, I don’t know what to do, so I listen to the engineers. I was far away round the track from garage and just wanted to double-check that I got message right to switch off the engine, because that’s the last thing you want to do. And I had just gone past an opening by the side of the track, so I had time to go looking for another one when I realised that the engine was okay.

“We could have had pole position today. I lost a tenth of a second, which is all I needed. But I never know what to expect in the last sector here, and when we were together at Red Bull, Mark Webber taught me many lessons here and I still don’t get it. I need to go back to school! But when I consider where we were this morning, I think we made a really good recovery.”

Hamilton handled the changing wind direction well on his first run, which took 1m 19.149s. Vettel’s occupied 1m 19.661s, leaving Russian GP winner Valtteri Bottas, who had had engine issues of his own in his Mercedes, on 1m 19.390s, and his own team-mate, Raikkonen, on 1m 19.639s. But where Hamilton was unable to improve on his second run, Vettel jumped the Finns with 1m 19.200s, setting up the next instalment in his and Hamilton’s mana a mano contest.

“It’s going to be a tough race tomorrow when you see how close it is between us,” Hamilton said. “It’s milliseconds. It’s the third longest run to the first corner here, I think, so it’s important that I get a good start. We’ve worked hard at that, so we’ll do the best we can.”

“I need a perfect start, simple as that,” Vettel countered as Bottas listened intently, planning a repeat of his own demon getaway that won him his first grand prix success last time out. “I just need to do everything right, and then the best way is to both attack and defend.”

Hamilton would like nothing better than to head to his beloved Monaco having turned the red tide and retrieved the lead of the title chase with a 55th victory tomorrow afternoon. But it’s no clear-cut matter.