During qualifying for the Monaco GP, Lewis Hamilton once again had to acknowledge his superiority in teammate George Russell, something that he believes will happen very often for the rest of the season.
“It looked great yesterday,” Hamilton told Sky Sports F1. “We really worked hard to improve the car and it felt great straight away. We were clearly competitive on Friday and also on Saturday morning. We haven’t made any drastic changes or anything.”
Hamilton nevertheless qualified ‘only’ seventh, two places behind teammate George Russell. According to Hamilton, he does not have a new part in Monaco that Russell does. The Mercedes F1 cars are therefore not identical in Monaco.
“The team has worked very hard at the factory to get an upgrade ready for the past two races and an upgrade for this weekend. However, we only had one copy and George got it,” said Hamilton. “I expected it would be difficult to qualify better than George because he had the new part.”
“It’s great to see that we’re bringing upgrades. But once we got into qualifying, I don’t understand it. I already know that I will automatically lose two tenths when we go into qualifying. That’s certainly frustrating and it’s something I don’t have an answer to at the moment.”
“I don’t drive differently, I think the laps are good, for some reason I couldn’t complete the lap.”
Hamilton was then asked whether Monaco can herald the turnaround for Mercedes. Hamilton is moderately positive but thinks it will be difficult for him to outperform teammate George Russell in qualifying for the rest of the season.
“I think for some reason we are a lot closer this weekend, which is great to see,” said Hamilton. “As I said, the car feels good, so much better than in previous years. But three and a half tenths away from pole is a lot here, which is still six tenths at another circuit. We are still seriously behind in terms of speed.”
“We have to keep pushing. We will get closer throughout the year as upgrades are introduced. However, I don’t expect to be able to qualify ahead of George in qualifying, especially this year, but we have to keep pushing. The races are very good.”