Lewis Hamilton surprised himself by joining former teammate George Russell on the front row of the grid for Sunday's Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, and says Ferrari closing the gap to Mercedes is proof "the fight is on."
After qualifying 0.064 seconds off Russell's pole position time in Spain, Hamilton secured his highest starting grid position since joining Ferrari at the start of last year.
The seven-time world champion said he had relatively low expectations going into qualifying after missing out on Friday's opening practice session of the weekend to make way for academy driver Dino Beganovic.
"I really surprised myself, I really wasn't expecting to be fighting for the front row," Hamilton said. "I've been trying to explain that normally when you miss practice one, you are a bit on the back foot, but not so bad, you can usually recover.
"This has been the hardest to, like practice two for example, I was 1.1 seconds off. And then I was like, okay, I'll come back in practice three, but P3 I'm still half a second off -- 0.7 seconds off the fastest time.
"So, I was like, this is not my weekend, but I stepped away from the track inbetween P3 [and] qualifying, which I never ever do. I don't think I've ever done that. I was like, 'I've got to get out of here.' And then I went back to my motorhome, came back and just recalibrated myself.
"And I felt Q1 the car felt fantastic. On top of that, it really comes down to also the team have been working so hard. I'm so thankful to the guys who brought everything back to the factory, they've worked so hard to bring these upgrades.
"But even with that, we're still behind Mercedes. I'm happy that we're close, but they're still so strong. Even with a good lap, there's a lot of work to do to get ahead of these guys."
Hamilton will start ahead of the second Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli, but his Ferrari teammate, Charles Leclerc, will start from 10th on the grid after an accident in qualifying.
He suspects Mercedes' race pace will prove too quick for him on Sunday, but is optimistic Ferrari's latest performance upgrades have closed the gap to the championship leaders.
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"It definitely will be challenging without my teammate within the front group," Hamilton said. "But it's been done before.
"It's a long way down to Turn 1 for one. I'm on the dirty side, which is not the greatest. But, yeah, these guys I think were really quick on the long runs, as they have been all year. So I have no idea whether I'll be able to keep up. We'll find out tomorrow.
"I'm going to give it a go. Still, what's clear is what we're doing is working. We're improving as a team. I think, clearly, these guys just seem to have extra in the pocket every time we bring an upgrade. They're still ahead.
"So we've got some work ahead of us ... I don't know when they're going to bring something else again. Maybe the next race or whatever. So it's going to be swapping and changing. But it's great for us to ... This is the closest we've been pace-wise, I think, in quali [fying].
"And as I said, I'm so, so grateful to the guys back on the team. I've seen how focused and how hard everyone's working. And everyone's just quiet and goes about their business and is just so passionate. But I really want them to know how thankful I am, because it felt great out there to put a lap together and see that we're that close. This early, we're still early in the season. So the fight is on."