Lewis Hamilton managed to wrestle his Mercedes W14 to a sixth place in qualifying for the Mexico-City Grand Prix, but is far from confident with his ride. During practice he managed no better than P7, and his qualifying result came from a great final effort to clear Oscar Piastri and teammate George Russell. His grid place was momentarily under jeopardy as he was investigated for a yellow flag infringement, but the stewards cleared the Briton of any wrongdoing.
“I’ve been struggling all weekend with this car,” Hamilton said. “The car’s been a bit of a nightmare to drive, it just doesn’t like this track.
“We made some good changes going into qualifying, I was much, much happier with the car. I wish we’d done in the morning but then Q1 and Q2 weren’t looking too bad, Q2 second lap was great.”
Without saying so much the W14 seems to be very much a ‘diva’, making it difficult for the Mercedes driver to drive it to its full potential.
“The car is just really peaky. Sometimes it works, sometimes doesn’t, and I just wasn’t able to extract much more from it again. I think, in a perfect world, maybe I could have been fifth but that’s about it.”
The seven time world champion has had mixed results ever since the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez returned to the Formula 1 calendar, and given how much of a diva his car is, Hamilton expected a difficult Sunday.
“It’s going to be a real challenge with that car tomorrow. We’re overheating, brakes overheating, it’s going to be very hard for us to battle,” he explained. “I don’t know what kind of race we’re going to have but it’s going to be on a knife’s edge.”
And even if the car somehow is more drivable tomorrow, the 103-time Grand Prix winner doesn’t expect to make up much ground.
“Overtaking here is very difficult, so I don’t anticipate a lot of overtaking.”
