Qualifying was ‘frustrating, like every qualifying session this year’

Lewis Hamilton’s season-long struggles with his car in qualifying continued at the Mexican Grand Prix.

The Mercedes driver’s sixth place on the grid is 11 positions higher than he started last weekend in Austin. However, he was once again disappointed to discover the satisfactory balance he found in final practice deserted him when qualifying began.

“The car felt good in P3, I didn’t change anything and then qualifying just completely turned on its head,” Hamilton told the official F1 channel. “Definitely a frustrating session, but that’s every qualifying session I’ve had this year.”

Hamilton started in the same position last year and rose through the field to finish second. However he said “there’s no way we’re going to be doing that this weekend with the car that we have, I don’t think.”

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, 2024
Russell out-qualified Hamilton in the old-spec Mercedes

While Hamilton is continuing to use Mercedes’ latest floor upgrade, his team mate George Russell is using the previous specification, as a result of his crashes during the last two weekends. He beat Hamilton to fifth on the grid by almost three-tenths of a second.

“Maybe George is more comfortable on the older package, I don’t know, we’ll see,” said Hamilton. “So we’ll get good readings of which is best for the future.”

Russell was pleased with his qualifying performance after badly damaging his car when he went off at turn eight on Friday.

“I’m really happy with the recovery,” he said. “Obviously, we’re still on the old bits from 12 races ago. My lap felt really, really strong. Super-happy with it, just a tenth from P3.

“After yesterday, we would have taken that.”

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