Google News
In Las Vegas, Lewis Hamilton had a challenging qualifying session and secured a starting position of 10th on the grid for the race.. On the other hand, his teammate George Russell will start as the 3rd. Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff reacted to Hamilton's disappointing performance in Q2.
“It remains a mystery,” -Toto Wolff said, as quoted by crash.net “Having the tyres in the right window and you can see the difference. We saw it in Free Practice 3. Very difficult to understand”. Hamilton had huge problems, and he emphasized on the radio that he could not go faster.
Wolff now explained why this happened; “Yeah, because he didn’t have any more grip. We are really talking about four or five degrees of temperature difference between grip and no grip. You can see some teams - the McLarens - who play in the front and are out in Q1.
And the Ferraris put in stunning laps, both of them half a second ahead of everybody else”. - Hamilton continued.
Lewis Hamilton on his performance
Lewis Hamilton was not satisfied with his performance, believing he could have done better.
The day prior, Mercedes appeared to be a team capable of achieving a strong result. However, grip was a significant issue for Hamilton, hindering his performance. Despite this setback, the Briton remains optimistic about changing the situation and showcasing his true potential in the race.
Las Vegas proved to be a formidable challenge for many drivers. “Not that great. Yesterday was better, we were relatively competitive. We made changes overnight. Q3 was poor, it put me on the back foot and I was just trying to recover, basically, in qualifying which is never the place to do so.
I struggled with grip. The car just wasn’t working for me. It’s definitely difficult when you can’t even get through Q2”.