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.”
Antonelli said: “It was so close and it was a shame. There was a little bit left on the table but it was a decent lap. Congrats to Lewis and we focus on tomorrow now. Ferrari have done an incredible step forward so it is going to be incredibly tough. Lewis is in great form. We like the challenge. We will go for it.”
Verstappen said he thought Hamilton and Antonelli “look a bit quick” to challenge in the sprint.
“It was very close, it could easily have been P3 or P6/7. But we are on the good side. We are still not where we want to be. A few things to figure out to find more lap time and we will try to do that after the sprint.”
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.”
Russell, who needs a good run of races to narrow the gap to Antonelli, was a similar margin adrift – 0.346secs behind the Italian.
“Story of the year, always on the back foot. Usually in Q3 I can make a step but today it wasn’t the case. We need to understand why that is,” Russell said.
Norris was 0.364secs off pole, and just 0.032secs ahead off Piastri, but that was a decent result given he was hampered by a broken brake duct, which was fixed just before his final run.
He said: “It was (hampering) me throughout. For the final run we fixed it, but the car was completely different and way better again. By the time I got the feeling for the final lap I felt like I could have pushed way more. So, just unfortunate today, but the pace was still there or thereabouts.”
