Lewis Hamilton has revealed that changes made to his car overnight put him ‘on the back foot’ in FP3, before struggling to piece a lap together during qualifying at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
The seven-time world champion will start Sunday’s race from 10th, after a grid penalty for Carlos Sainz pushed him up the order.
But for the second time in the three US-based races this season, Hamilton was caught off guard by track evolution and was unable to qualify for qualifying.
Both of the Williams cars, as well as an Alfa Romeo driven by Kevin Magnussen and Pierre Gasly’s Alpine, qualified ahead of the Brit.
George Russell, Hamilton’s teammate, started his car on the second row of the grid, behind three-time world champion Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.
Mercedes’ overnight car changes
Now, Hamilton has explained to Sky Sports F1 quite what went wrong at the Las Vegas Street Circuit.
“Just not that great,” he admitted.
“We were looking fairly competitive and things had improved a little bit yesterday. Made some adjustments overnight; FP3 wasn’t very good. Put me a little bit on the back foot, and I was basically just trying to get back in qualifying, which is never the right place to do that.
“I just had trouble gripping the wheel; the car wasn’t working for me. It’s challenging when you can’t even finish Q2, but that’s life.”
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