Verstappen qualified for pole at Suzuka with a lap more than half a second faster than his nearest rival in Q3, while Hamilton had to settle for seventh on the grid.
Lewis Hamilton admitted he cannot understand why Red Bull still has such a performance advantage after Max Verstappen won pole at the Japanese Grand Prix.
After a bad run in Singapore, Saturday proved that things are back to normal for Red Bull this weekend. Verstappen was more than half a second faster than Oscar Piastri, who was well ahead of the Dutchman.
But it was an even more unpleasant day for Hamilton. He qualified seventh with teammate George Russell one place behind him, with both Mercedes cars beaten by the Red Bulls, Ferraris and McLarens.
Hamilton’s fastest time was more than 1 second slower than Verstappen’s pole lap. And the level of disparity at this stage of the season has the seven-time world champion worried.
He told reporters:
“As a team we really needed that when we went back and presented the problem – I hope the team realized this – but the second gap was huge. And it’s true. After two years and still a second behind the Red Bulls, this is not a good performance and we need to make sure we work hard over the winter to regain at least half of that gap before next year.
“We have a very sharp car. It’s like trying to balance a knife on its head. It’s never perfectly balanced, one way or the other. You try to bring it’s as close as possible from the middle, but that’s very difficult to do.” every weekend.
In a separate interview, he went further to say that his team needs to rethink its car concept before 2024. “Yesterday the balance wasn’t very good, we made some changes and some things worked well overnight, and overall the car felt very good today. It was nice to finish in P3, so I feel a lot more confident,” he said. speak.
“Then in qualifying I tried my best, but the seven-tenths deficit we had in the first sector was all to the rear. Our car had a lot of load on the front and not much like we need in the back.
“So we’re very far away from that point and it’s 100% clear to me that it’s a [concept car problem] and we need to make sure we change that over the next year , which we hope to do.”
Lando Norris qualified third behind McLaren teammate Piastri and ahead of Charles Leclerc in fourth. The Ferrari driver was briefly investigated for not following the race director’s instructions, but was quickly cleared of any wrongdoing.
2 thoughts on “Lewis Hamilton doesn’t believe what Max Verstappen did in Japanese GP qualifying”
Lo que quiere decir Hamilton, aunque no lo diga abiertamente, es que “no comprende cómo se mantiene semejante ventaja por dos años”. No dice “acá hay gato encerrado “. Aca “hay trampa”. Y es lo que todos vemos. Un auto cohete de “otra categoría “, compitiendo contra 21 carretas del siglo pasado, sin chance alguna. Y para colmo, mostrando en alguna carrera que “se van a pique”, para lograr acabar con el aburrimiento, pero que resulta ser un acting más que una realidad (no se puede terminar un campeonato faltando 7 carreras, es vergonzoso). Creo que lo que calla Hamilton es que está siendo parte de un circo tramposo, manejado por mafiosos, en los que se ha decidido determinar quién será campeón al comienzo de la temporada, y que ello nada tiene que ver con el talento sino con una superioridad motriz obtenida violando reglamentos y topes presupuestarios.
If you remember that several days ago a comment was left on this page bt someone spoke about the talk in the paddock that the RB team had illegally modified their cars while FIA executives were aware this and told RB to return the car to it’s normal function which they did. It then came as no surprise that Verstappen performance was way off his normal pace on track. Did FIA in anyway penalize for illegally modifying their car? Of course not. And now it seems like RB return Verstappen car in the upgrades it had all last season as well as this one. Every get the feeling that the suits at FIA and other teams would be very happy if Lewis Hamilton left F1.