A dejected Lewis Hamilton said he was “definitely not fast” after taking seventh on the grid for Saturday’s sprint race in Losail.
The Mercedes driver qualified just under four tenths of a second slower than team mate George Russell, who will start from the front row after almost beating Lando Norris to pole position.
Hamilton, who has repeatedly struggled in qualifying sessions this year, said today’s session was “the same as every other qualifying – not that great.”
“I’m just slow and [it’s the] same every every weekend,” he added. “The car felt relatively decent, no issues and not really much more to say.”
Mercedes scored a one-two finish at the last round in Las Vegas and Hamilton admitted the car is competitive this weekend, but he doubts he will get the best out of it. “The positive is that the car is fast and George should be able to shoot for pole tomorrow,” he said.
Starting from the fourth row of the grid, Hamilton doubts he’ll be in contention for victory in the sprint race. “The long run didn’t feel too bad but when you’re always back where I am, it makes it’s very hard to be competing – well, almost impossible pretty much – to be competing for wins from there,” he said.
Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said Hamilton looked on course to qualify on the front two rows until the end of his lap.
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“We were optimistic coming into the weekend but didn’t expect to see our performance in the same window as we did in Vegas so George’s P2 today is encouraging for the team,” he said. “Pace across the top four teams looks very close so it’s beneficial to be starting the sprint race on the front row.
“Lewis was looking competitive in his final lap of SQ3 but unfortunately lost a little time in the last two corners, prior to this it looked like he was going to also finish in the top four.”
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