Lewis Hamilton extinguished the hopes of a surprise Mercedes victory at the Japanese Grand Prix with an honest assessment of a difficult qualifying session for the Silver Arrows.
The seven-time world champion will start Sunday's race sixth on the grid, two places ahead of team-mate George Russell. Both of them were a second off the pace of the top three, all of whom were separated by less than six-hundredths of a second.
Both of them were out-qualified by Esteban Ocon, while the Frenchman's Alpine team-mate Fernando Alonso also went quicker than Russell. Hamilton hopes to get the better of them both in the race, but admitted that qualifying proved just how far away his team still is from Ferrari and Red Bull.
"We knew coming to this circuit that we wouldn't be competing for the front row or the win – the Red Bull and Ferrari are in a different league here, and we have some fundamental limitations with our car," said the Brit.
"It feels good to drive and it was a clean session for me, but we are just a long way off in terms of the ultimate pace. We are pushing as hard as we can and it feels strong in the corners, but we are losing on the straights at this circuit.
"For tomorrow, I hope we will be a little bit closer, and maybe the weather will play a role, too. I don't think we can race the cars in front in a straight fight – but I hope we can beat the Alpines and my focus is simply on scoring a better result than we managed last weekend."
Russell lost his impressive record of being in the top five of every race he has finished last time out in Singapore. Eighth place on the grid is not an ideal place to be if he wants to get back to the results he has been used to this year, and appeared a little surprised about the size of the gap Mercedes has to close.
"P8 is not where we hoped to be qualifying here in Suzuka," he said. "We didn't expect to quite be in the fight with Red Bull and Ferrari, but we are a long way off them, and in fact had our own close battle today with Alpine.
"We know that our car has a lot of drag and on circuits like this, where you need a lot of downforce but also to be slippery on the straights, we tend to lose out. That's something we are working towards correcting for next year, but it takes time to do so. Looking ahead to the race, I think we will have stronger pace than we showed today – our long runs in FP3 were decent, but I'm not sure if it will be enough to race the top four cars tomorrow."
