Lewis Hamilton struggled to get into Q2 at Imola in his Mercedes W13. Very upset, furious even in his garage, he only finished in 13th position in this qualifying session.
It is clear that the problems are far from over in the world champion team, especially since George Russell is barely better, 11th.
It’s the first time since the Japanese GP in… 2012 that no Mercedes has reached Q3!
“It wasn’t a great session, naturally that’s disappointing. You come here with optimism and you know that everyone is working really hard at the factory, and things just aren’t going right. “
“It’s disappointing. I think we underperformed as a team today. There are things we should have done that we didn’t.”
“Anyway we’ll work as hard as we can to progress in the sprint race. It’s going to be a tough race, but hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow, and who knows, maybe we’ll move up the grid.”
“Every weekend is a rescue,” admits Hamilton.
As for the somewhat heated discussion with Toto Wolff, he adds: “It’s internal stuff. I’d rather not share that.”
His team-mate, Russell, said Mercedes were struggling to warm up the tyres.
“We’ve seen that in Australia as well.”
“So it was a bit of a shame how the red flags disrupted everything for us today. But if there’s a weekend to not be where you want to be, the sprint weekend is who to choose. It’s not ideal but we have a chance to recover positions tomorrow.”
