A gutted Lewis Hamilton eventually climbed from the cockpit of his Mercedes-AMG after the Q2 at the Monte Carlo circuit on Saturday afternoon, knowing he hadn't progressed through to the all important Q3.
It was the first time since 2013 that the three time champion failed to make it into Q3 due to a lack of pace and although he was on a faster lap that could have put him in the top ten, Stoffel Vandoorne crashing into the barriers in front of him dashed his final hope.
The fact was however, Lewis just didn't have the car beneath him that he had in the opening free practice session on Thursday and no matter what the team tried to do to fix the problem, they were unable to pinpoint exactly what was wrong…
“I really struggled with the car today and I just don't think the opportunity was quite there for me. It was a little bit unfortunate with the yellow flag, but it doesn't really matter now if I could have gone faster,” he said. “I think that lap may have just got me into the top 10 but I would have struggled to make it into the top five with the pace that I had.”
‘Valtteri didn't have any struggles today so I'm a bit confused and I can't pinpoint the problem at the moment. I'm feeling pretty deflated right now but I'll try again tomorrow. It's great that Valtteri extracted a good lap. We just need to identify why I wasn't able to be up there too. Onward and upwards.”
Hamilton was that deflated when he realized he was out of the session, he was actually unable to get out the car right away.
“I was devastated after the session, to the point where I couldn't get out of the car. So much energy and work goes into these weeks, collectively as a team and individually, the way you prep yourself, and when you see the other cars able to get it to work, you can't for the life of you think why we weren't able to. It just feels like it's a mystery, because none of us currently understand it,” he said
Lewis admitted that one major problem was tyre temperatures with both himself and Bottas needing two laps to warm up their Pirelli rubber to get them to work at their optimum…
"It's a very, very strange thing, because I did the same thing as I do always when I leave the garage. But it's actually a case of going in and out throughout the lap, mostly under. And it's not even just the fronts or rears, it could be one tyre, and another tyre, but in general all tyres were not in the window. I think it's difficult to say whether it's setting up the car, I don't know how it is for everyone else. But for us, obviously we don't understand it currently, how one car can have them working, and the other not.”
