Lewis Hamilton has questioned the pace of his stuttering Mercedes after the French GP qualifying session. After a superb final lap, the Brit will start fourth at Circuit Paul Ricard as he aims for his fourth consecutive finish inside the top three.
However the 37-year-old was left slightly confused as his car still could not match the pace of the Ferrari and Red Bull drivers. Although the Silver Arrows have made improvements in recent weeks, Hamilton finds himself almost a second off the time set by Charles Leclerc, who claimed pole position.
"My last lap was great. I finished it and thought that was an awesome lap but I was still nine tenths off the guys ahead," Hamilton surmised. "I am not sure why that gap has got bigger over these two races. They [Leclerc and Verstappen] are in their own league in that respect performance wise.
"When we say we had updates to the car, we brought the tiniest thing, so it could be half a tenth, maybe a tenth if it worked perfectly. It's difficult to really see it. I came here thinking last race we were three or four tenths off and I thought maybe this weekend we would maybe two or three tenths off but we have been a second off all weekend.
"I was happy with my lap and with my performance but they are in their own place. But we are still there so everyone behind me is struggling too so we just keep fighting." Ahead of his 300th race in F1, Hamilton downplayed his chances of competing for a race win. “No. They are in a different league; we just have to accept we’re not in the same league in terms of performance of the car,” he added. “But still, I can get a good start and hopefully I can battle with Perez maybe. I’m still going to be challenging and fighting for a podium if I can.”
Team mate George Russell, who qualified sixth behind Lando Norris’s McLaren, echoed Hamilton’s comments by saying that he might be able to challenge Sergio Perez in the race. "I think we’ve got the opportunity to fight with Checo [Perez], and even before Carlos [Sainz’s] grid penalty we thought our pace was very similar to Checo and Carlos.
“But Max and Charles just seem a step ahead of those guys, so we probably won’t be in the mix with them – but Lewis and I will be setting our sights on P3.” Max Verstappen will occupy second spot on the starting grid, while Perez starts ahead of Hamilton in third.
Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who suffered heartbreak in the closing stages of the Austrian Grand Prix when his engine caught fire, will start in lowly 19th place tomorrow afternoon.
The Spaniard was already carrying a 10-place grid drop into Sunday’s race after exceeding his allocation of control electronics components. However, it was confirmed that Ferrari have also decided to install a new internal combustion engine on Sainz’s car, consigning him to a back-of-the-grid start.
