It was a challenging Saturday for the British driver to round off the 2023 season, as he didn’t manage to make the cut for Q3 and will thus start the final race of the year just outside of the top ten in P11.
Hamilton suffered from traffic issues, just like the other unusual elimination of the afternoon, Carlos Sainz stopped in Q1, but, more importantly, had mentioned car issues upon hearing the confirmation of his knockout.
Asked if he was disappointed with how the session had paved out, the unsatisfied Mercedes driver replied:“What do you think?”
With six podiums, but yet again no race win since the 2021 Saudi Arabian GP, it has definitely been another frustrating season for the seven times World Champion, who also lost a seventh podium in Austin due to a post race disqualification for running an illegal floor.
“Just that this is a very unpredictable car, and it’s been the same for the whole year,” he expanded on the matter of his starting position.
The impact of the tough season, and of the car that didn’t really suit Hamilton’s driving style is evident in his opinion on the fact that this was the last time he had to undergo qualifying with the W14:
“I want to say that I’m relieved. I’m definitely happy that this is nearly over.”
Photo Credit: Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team
The fatal flaw of the challenger developed by Mercedes for 2023 is definitely the fact that it’s rather difficult to predict its behaviour, even for an experienced driver like Hamilton, who has brought up the issue numerous times over the span of the season:
“It’s more inconsistent than ever before. It’s just that at the third corner, from the moment I hit the brakes to the moment it turned to the moment it hit the apex, it’s massively out of balance, and very hard to predict what it’s going to happen.
“Tyres are fine, it’s just… hard,” he added a bit defeated while commenting on the idea that his pace issue might have been caused by tyre warming difficulties as a consequence of a faulty set.
His feedback on the recently introduced rule that bans overtaking in the pit lane was extremely brief:
“No one was blocking anyone, it was the same as in most races, except that there wasn’t any pit overtaking, but that’s about it.”
Hamilton hardly had any time to tune his race setup, as on Friday he had to sit out FP1 due to Formula 2 championship contender Fred Vesti replacing him to check off the second young driver session of the year, whereas FP2 was a very fragmented session, with two red flags caused by Sainz and Hulkenberg’s crashes taking up most of the allotted running time.
For this reason, in spite of the fact that the W14 usually has performed significantly better in races, the former McLaren driver didn’t appear to be very confident in his cahnces to end the year in a positive way:
“I did a little bit of a longer run this morning, but, I mean, I think I got only four laps yesterday, so…I wouldn’t say so. I’ll try and turn it around tomorrow if I can, and see how far we can get up,” he concluded.
