Lewis Hamilton’s “disastrous” qualifying explained by “valuable” two-tenth loss

Lewis Hamilton’s “disastrous” sprint qualifying performance at the F1 Austrian Grand Prix has been put down to losing crucial time in traffic on his final lap.

Hamilton secured sixth on the grid for the Saturday sprint race, qualifying 0.2s behind Mercedes teammate George Russell.

The seven-time world champion endured a scrappy qualifying session at the Red Bull Ring, narrowly making it through in SQ1 after making a mistake on his first medium tyre effort.

It was a similar story on his final run as he ran wide at Turn 3, costing himself crucial lap time.

Reflecting on the session, Hamilton said: “I wasn’t in the mix, in the whole session. It was pretty disastrous from my point of view. What can I say? Practice felt good, the car generally felt good.

“I don’t think we had the pace for pole. But, very bad laps…”

However, it appears Hamilton lost even more time behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

Leclerc was out of sync after an anti-stall issue kept him in the pit lane longer than expected.

This meant that Leclerc’s out-lap crossed with Hamilton’s best lap, resulting in the latter being affected by the turbulent air into the final couple of corners.

When analysing Hamilton’s SQ3 effort, Sky’s Anthony Davidson felt Leclerc cost Hamilton around two-tenths.

“As Lewis said himself, it wasn’t plain-sailing. Not all of it was on his shoulders, some of it was out of his control,” Davidson explained.

“You can see he is catching the Ferrari. He is definitely going to be in turbulence through Turn 9 and particularly 10, so you are losing valuable tenths of a second.

“It’s hard to absolutely quantify the right amount. Probably two tenths, I’d say, is what you could lose in those two corners.

“There is nothing he could have done because Leclerc was out of position.”

It was still a positive day for Mercedes though as George Russell qualified fourth.

It means Mercedes’ recent resurgence continues following an upturn in form since the Canadian Grand Prix.

Davidson feels like there’s more to come from Mercedes during the remainder of the weekend.

“The car has clearly got pace, as Russell proved,” he added. “It’s a good thing. It’s nice to hear Mercedes disappointed, for once, that they’re not right at the sharp end.

“It wasn’t too long ago that they would have taken a result like this. Onwards and upwards for Lewis. There is more from the car.

“Like Toto said, getting out of sync from the word go, with that rally-style moment at Turn 1, really went against him from the beginning. I feel like the car can have more pace for tomorrow and Sunday.”