Lewis Hamilton makes Mercedes ‘lacking’ race pace admission after qualifying disappointment

Lewis Hamilton in a press conference with the F1 logo behind him

Lewis Hamilton admitted Mercedes were short of one or two tenths in race trim at Monza on Sunday, after his disappointment in qualifying.

Hamilton said he was “furious” with his performance in Q3 on Saturday, qualifying sixth despite being less than two tenths of a second from pole position, but his P5 finish on Sunday was 22 seconds behind eventual race winner, Charles Leclerc.

Lewis Hamilton ‘could have finished ahead of one Ferrari’ with higher Italian GP grid slot

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher and Sam Cooper

Hamilton’s qualifying frustration was followed with Mercedes appearing slightly behind the pace of McLaren and Ferrari on Sunday, though ahead of the Red Bull drivers of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez.

Despite that, though, he believed that if he had qualified further forward, taking on the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz may have been possible.

“My qualifying performance at the end yesterday, and then just race pace, we had more degradation, and just generally, we were lacking one or two tenths in the race,” Hamilton explained to media including PlanetF1.com at Monza.

“I probably could have finished ahead of one Ferrari if I had been further ahead.”

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As for his race as a whole, Hamilton brought home more points for Mercedes and was ahead of his team-mate on the road, with George Russell having suffered front wing damage early in the race on Sunday.

Given their rivals around them scored more points, Hamilton is looking to his Mercedes team to try and find the reasons for why the W15 appeared to fall away after topping free practice.

“It was okay, it was nothing special,” he said of his afternoon as a whole.

“It’s just, again, it’s just like you’re either graining the left front or graining on the left rear.

“We just didn’t have the pace. We have to go and look and try and understand why. Also, because we looked better on Friday than we did. We got almost slower through the weekend, or others got faster or we were too light [on fuel] and they were heavy.”

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