Lewis Hamilton was apologetic after his heavy crash during qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix – shortly before team-mate George Russell also damaged his Mercedes.
Showing strong pace on the track, the Brit was on track to be very competitive during the session. He might even have been in the hunt for pole, with his car competitive with the likes of Red Bull and Ferrari for the first time all year.
He was in the middle of an impressive-looking hot lap when disaster struck and ended his chances of a strong qualifying result. Mercedes felt he was on track for a time that might have put him on the front row, but instead Hamilton lost control and buried his car into a tyre wall.
He was quick to apologise over team radio, and did the same later on when reflecting on the accident. "I'm incredibly disappointed in myself ultimately and so sorry to the team," said the clearly gutted seven-time world champion, for whom crashes have been few and far between over the years.
"Everyone worked so hard to put the car together – and I never like to bring it back damaged. I don't have an answer right now to what happened. I lost the back end in turn seven and that was that. I was encouraged to see our performance, though.
"I think we were fighting for a top three start – and we weren't expecting to be that close. That's a huge positive for the team. I'm starting quite far back, and I'm not sure what's possible from there. We have the Sprint as well as the race on Sunday – hopefully I can make up for some lost time."
As a result of the crash, Hamilton will drive the team's spare chassis for the rest of the weekend and barely had any running in FP2 as a result. Meanwhile, Russell lamented how the team had been hit by such rotten luck as they demonstrated their strongest pace of the year.
"I think that was our best qualifying session of the year in terms of pure pace – and the worst in terms of the outcome," he said. "Racing can be like that sometimes. I could have been P4 and I was one tenth up on my lap, and absolutely went for it because I thought there was a chance of P3.
"I'm feeling fine physically. In terms of performance, there are positive signs. We have brought some things to the car, and the interpretation of some rules has probably been in our favour, too. Lewis was doing a phenomenal job and absolutely flying. Maybe I went a bit the wrong direction on set-up for qualifying – but hopefully that will be good for the race. Ordinarily we have better race pace than single lap, so hopefully, we can make up for today."
