Lewis Hamilton has voiced his displeasure at qualifying fifth on the grid for tomorrow’s Spanish GP.
Keen to bury memories of a frustrating weekend in Monaco, Lewis Hamilton found pace in his SF-25 to move into third place during the closing stages of Q3.
However, Max Verstappen and George Russell both improved on their final laps to demote the seven-time world champion to fifth.
Although his strongest qualifying since taking pole for the Chinese GP sprint race, Lewis Hamilton was disconsolate after Q3 at the Spanish GP. Speaking to the media after qualifying, he outlined the reason behind his disappointment.
“Definitely an improvement from where we’ve been, definitely an improvement I would say from my Qualifying side.
“I’m relatively happy with it… we’re not P3, and we’re definitely not where we wanted to be.”
Although unhappy with the result, Hamilton was optimistic he was beginning to get on top of the SF-25.
“I think the car is moving in… set-up wise and just process wise, I think this weekend has gone in the right direction,” he said.
“I think we had some problems through some of the practice sessions with like… a steering wheel issue we had in the second one and also some downforce issue we had in P2, which really kind of… it was 2% of aero performance from the front-end we were missing.
“To have recovered and got the car in a good place, I’m relatively happy.”
When asked about his chances for a strong race result, Lewis Hamilton stated his bullish aims.
“Ah, it’s going to be close. It’s really close between us all, so I’m going to try and get on the podium for once!”
Leclerc disappointed with Spanish GP qualifying performance
Team-mate Charles Leclerc also endured a challenging qualifying. The Monegasque opted to do ksut one lap in Q3. He explained the reason for this after qualifying.
“I mean, the run plan we had no choice – I had no tyres anymore,” said Leclerc. “I think we were one of the only cars that had four [sets of] softs going into quali, which was very difficult already.
“We [also] had to go out in Q1 once again, and there we… I mean, we sacrificed another soft, so I only had like three new softs for Q1, Q2 and Q3, against others that had five new softs. It was a bit tricky, but it’s the way it is.
“I hope that our tyre choice will pay off for tomorrow, because on the other hand we more new [sets of mediums and hards] than others. I hope it will pay off.”
