Lewis Hamilton last at Las Vegas GP as Ferrari nightmare continues

Lewis Hamilton has qualified last in a wet and wild qualifying session at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. 

The seven-time world champion suffered a shock Q1 elimination in the wet in Las Vegas and ended up slowest of all in 20th. 

Hamilton was nearly three seconds slower than Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc, who safely progressed into the next part of qualifying. 

There appeared to be some miscommunication as Hamilton looked to have aborted his final flying lap, having only just made the line in time.

"Are we safe?" Hamilton asked, to which race engineer Riccardo Adami replied: "Keep pushing."

Hamilton said "I got the light..." before Adami came back "No, push!".

Having been eliminated, Hamilton reported he "couldn't get the tyres to work". 

Hamilton has endured a torrid maiden campaign with Ferrari, branding his first season in red as a "nightmare" after retiring from the Sao Paulo Grand Prix last time out. 

It marks the first time in Hamilton's F1 career that he has qualified last on pure pace. 

What went wrong for Hamilton?

Analysing footage of Hamilton's final lap on the SkyPad, former F1 driver Anthony Davidson noted: "Lewis runs over a cone and it may get stuck under his car, which may explain why there was this lack of performance at the end."

Hamilton said he could not see the cone under his car and blamed his early exit on a miscommunication.

“As I came across the line it was red so there was a miscommunication from my side,” he explained. “It was red for me, so I’m not quite sure.”

“I got yellow flags in the last corner, coming into 17 there were yellow flags so I had to have a lift and when I came to the line it was red.”

Hamilton added: “It was very slippery. The first set of tyres obviously didn’t work for us and I was just struggling to generate the heat in the tyres for some reason.

“It’s a shame because the guys did such a good job and the car was feeling awesome in P3 and I really, really felt like we had good pace and then the rain came. Not a lot to say to be honest.”