Just a few hours after Hamilton did really well in the Shanghai sprint race, he didn’t do so great in qualifying. He messed up at a turn because of the wind and ended up in 18th place on the starting grid.
Hamilton admitted that the mistake was his fault, not the team’s. He said, “I don’t blame anything on the team. I think, not my best qualifying laps.”
Even though he had a tough time going from feeling great in the morning to feeling disappointed in the afternoon, Hamilton didn’t seem too bothered. He said, “Shit happens you know. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don’t. This car is on a knife edge, as we know, so it can easily do what we’ve had. But I’ll have some fun from there.”
Hamilton explained that they tried some big changes to the car setup before qualifying. He said, “We made massive changes going into qualifying… just to see if we can find something. It didn’t feel terrible. I just couldn’t stop the car in Turn 14.”
Russell, Hamilton’s teammate, didn’t think there were huge differences between their cars, even though they tried different setups. He said, “We’re pretty similar on set-ups, and we both went in a similar direction.”
Russell ended up in 8th place after qualifying, but he wasn’t too happy about having to use an extra set of tires in the middle session because of another driver’s crash. He said, “It was a bit of a shame, Q2 because my first lap was strong enough for P3 until the last corner when Carlos brought the red.”
He explained that their team is working on making big improvements for the future, even if it means sacrificing some short-term gains. He said, “We are still trying to find the development path we need to be on to make some big steps. And that’s just where we are at the moment.”
So, even though Hamilton had a rough time in qualifying, both drivers are looking forward to making progress and fighting for better results in the future.
