Jaws landed on the ground at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit on Saturday night as Lewis Hamilton failed to make it out of Q1 for the first time since the 2017 Brazilian Grand Prix. But after finishing the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in 10th place, Hamilton explained his Mercedes team were struggling to get back in the fray this year.
Hamilton was pessimistic after qualifying – in which he failed to make Q2 after being edged out by the Aston Martin by Lance Stroll in Q1 as Hamilton declared his W13 ‘undriveable’ – and doubted his chances of making a recovery drive forward , as we have come to expect from the seven-time champion over the years.
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And unfortunately that pessimism proved justified as Hamilton was only able to move up to P10 from his P15 starting position, a rise helped by retirements from Valtteri Bottas, Daniel Ricciardo and Fernando Alonso – although Hamilton was also injured by the timing of a pit lane closure caused by the incidents of the latter two drivers.
“Personally, I feel like I’ve maximized everything,” Hamilton said at the end of the evening. “I don’t know if we made it as a team, but it is what it is. move on.
“It was difficult. I saw Alonso slowing down, there were double yellow flags so I didn’t push to pass him, then Daniel got stuck in the pit lane so I didn’t know if I could go in [the pits] when the car is just standing there. It just wasn’t great. Anyway, it is what it is.”
When asked what was learned this weekend, Hamilton replied: “The insights are there that we’ve gotten quite off the pace and we have a lot to do.”
Lewis Hamilton: Mercedes ‘quite off the pace with a lot of work to do’
George Russell at least managed to put the team in the top five on race day after beating his illustrious teammate in qualifying with a sixth place on the grid. And Russell said P5 was the best he could have hoped for on Sunday night in Jeddah.
“P5 was the maximum today,” he said. “We would have liked to have had more, but the car felt really good to drive. We know what we’re missing and that’s downforce, but I think we put the car in a really nice window this race.
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“I pushed as hard as I could and that was really cool. It was probably the most physical race I’ve experienced in Formula 1 and it was cool to push the body to its limits. This concentration over 50 laps on a street circuit like this, high speed, that was cool. But I want to do this battle for victories, not all alone for P5.
P5 was the ‘maximum’ possible for George Russell in the ‘most physical’ race