Lewis Hamilton’s reaction to Brazil GP qualifying speaks volumes about Mercedes’ hopes.

After qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix was abruptly ended by a sudden storm, Lewis Hamilton was fifth on the timesheets, one spot ahead of George Russell.

Lewis Hamilton seemed irritated following his qualifying performance, which makes it more difficult for the British driver to finally win a Formula 1 race this weekend.
The seven-time world champion arrived in Sao Paulo full of beans. He is an honorary Brazilian citizen and has been very successful at Interlagos over his F1 career, having won three times.

And on media day, he was all talk and no action. The Mercedes driver told the media, “I will be ready to take the fight to [Red Bull].” “I don’t intend to leave this season empty-handed like I did last.”

And in response to that outcome, he delivered a pretty depressing assessment of the session. He declared, “P5 is never going to feel that great.” “I tried my hardest, though, and hopefully Sunday’s race will be better. Although the car was performing fairly well, we appeared to be a few tenths slower than the guys in the lead.

“We made a few changes ahead of qualifying and it did seem to make the car a little nicer to drive. In general though, it wasn’t particularly fast… Over the rest of the weekend, I think we’ve got a bit of a battle on our hands.”

George Russell, Hamilton’s teammate who will start in the third row, was as taken aback as anyone by the abrupt change in the weather. “What a crazy weather day today!” he exclaimed. “I’ve never witnessed it shift so significantly as it did in Q3.

“I felt really bad about my last push lap. I was losing my grip and slipping around. Even though I was only a second behind and knew I would finish last, I wanted to pit for new tires even though I didn’t see much rain on my visor. Even though the lap was disappointing and frustrating, we finished in P6, which is not a bad place to start.”

Explaining the slightly underwhelming result for the team, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said: “For what turned out to be our final run, we left the garage early and queued at the end of the pit lane. It was clearly right to be at the front of the pack, but we’d lost too much tyre temperature whilst waiting for the green light.

Because of this, we had poor grip when starting the lap, which was especially costly because the rain had started to dampen the circuit. Although finishing in P5 and P6 was disappointing, we can still contend for a podium if we can defeat the Aston Martins early on Sunday.