George Russell flew the flag for Mercedes and Britain by securing third place on the grid at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, but Lewis Hamilton endured another poor qualifying session.
Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff wish Mercedes had the same lap pace that Ferrari was able to show again at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
The seven-time world champion didn’t even make it to Q3, narrowly missing out on the top 10. Ferrari, on the other hand, once again demonstrated their qualifying strength, beating Max Verstappen, who finished third with both drivers.
Carlos Sainz was 2nd on the timesheets, but will drop 10 places due to a start penalty. This means Hamilton will actually start the race from 10th place, giving him plenty of room to recover.
Hamilton has already revealed he is counting down the days until the end of this season. And that’s exactly the impression he gave again when he reacted to qualifying and sounded indifferent.
“It’s not that great. Yesterday I felt a little bit better and looked relatively competitive,” he said. “We made some changes overnight. FP3 was pretty bad so we fell a bit behind and in qualifying we basically tried to make up and it’s not the right place to do it.
“The car just didn’t go well for me, just the grip issues. And if you can’t even get through Q2, it’s definitely going to be difficult,” he said, adding that he thinks he can achieve it. When asked about it, he made it clear that he had no expectations for the race, replying: “Your guess is as good as mine.
”First of all, as far as the car is concerned, the tire grain size It’s related to this, but we were just as big as everyone else.” We had some setbacks in FP3, so I think it’s going to be about how we deal with that, where we push, where we don’t push, how we progress. But it’s impressive to see Ferrari today. That’s a fast car!
It wasn’t all bad for Mercedes in qualifying. Despite Hamilton’s struggles, George Russell did a much better job of getting temperature into his tyres and reaped the rewards, not only making it through to Q3 but going quick enough to secure the third grid slot.
It was fast enough to secure third place on the grid. When asked about the differences between the drivers, team principal Wolff said: “It remains a mystery.” You can tell the difference if the tire is in the right window. It was already seen in the third free practice session. Very difficult to understand.
“I think you’re actually talking about a 4-5 degree difference in temperature with the grip and without the grip, and then you play like McLaren at the front and lose in the first quarter. You’ll see some teams then take the next step.” Ferrari, meanwhile, recorded a breathtaking lap, both half a second ahead of everyone.