Laurence Edmondson, F1 Editor
After securing seventh place on the grid for Saturday’s sprint race in Qatar, Lewis Hamilton was at a loss to explain another disappointing result, saying, “I’m just slow.”
In his penultimate race weekend for Mercedes before he joins Ferrari, Hamilton’s single-lap struggles continued with a seventh-place finish in Friday’s sprint qualifying.
The seven-time champion was 0.399 seconds off the pace of teammate George Russell, who secured second on the grid for Saturday’s sprint race in Qatar and beat Hamilton to victory at the Las Vegas Grand Prix last weekend.
Lackluster qualifying performances have become a theme of Hamilton’s last season with Mercedes, and Russell has outqualified him 22-6 across sprint qualifying and grand prix qualifying sessions this year.
“I’m just slow. Same every weekend,” Hamilton told F1 TV. “So … yeah, car felt relatively decent, no issues, not really much more to say.”
When the interviewer said the lack of performance could not solely be down to Hamilton, who has more pole positions than any other driver in F1 history, the driver suggested he was not as fast as he used to be.
“Who knows. I’m definitely not fast anymore,” Hamilton added.
Hamilton has spoken about his struggles extracting single-lap performance from the latest generation of F1 cars, which he admits require a different driving style to the cars he won seven titles with.
His performance in races has been better relative to Russell, but Hamilton said starting so low on the grid means he has not been able to maximise his potential.
“The long run [pace in practice] didn’t feel too bad, but when you’re always back where I am it makes it almost impossible pretty much to be competing for wins from there,” Hamilton said.
“But that’s the sprint, I’ll do what I can tomorrow.”