In the wake of two high-profile collisions involving Mercedes-Benz Q3s, Hamilton said, “I’m incredibly disappointed in myself.”
In the wake of two high-profile collisions involving Mercedes-Benz Q3s, Hamilton said, “I’m incredibly disappointed in myself.”. After setting the third-fastest time in Q2 at the Red Bull Ring, Hamilton was driving around the tight Austrian track when the back end of his Mercedes stepped out in Turn 7. Unfortunately, Hamilton was unable to stop himself from crashing into the barriers, which did a lot of damage to the front end of his W13. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Russell lost the back end of his Mercedes going through Turn 10, backed into the barriers, and caused another red flag.
Hamilton, on the situation
Hamilton said about his crash after qualifying, “I’m incredibly disappointed in myself, ultimately, and so sorry to the team. Everybody worked so hard to put this car together, and I never like to bring it back damaged, and we were fighting for a top-three, I think. So I don’t have an answer for it. I swapped the back end in Turn 7 and that was that.”
When asked if he was at least encouraged by the speed he showed in qualifying, Hamilton said, “I’m encouraged, of course, by our performance, it’s just we weren’t expecting to be as close as that today, so that’s a positive from the team – but I’m really quite far back. So I don’t know what’s possible from there, but we have a Sprint race as well tomorrow, so I hope I can make up some lost time.”
Russell’s situation is a little bit better, though. Before he crashed, the Briton was in fifth place on the grid. Russell admitted, though, that he was worried about how his car would look when it got back to the garage.
Russell said, “We need to review the crash damage,” when asked if catching P5 before the crash was lucky. “There’s nothing lucky or fortunate about a mistake like that… I could have been P4, I was a tenth up on my lap, then absolutely went for it, because I thought there was an opportunity for third, and it turns out probably not. But we just need to see how much damage it’s done. Sorry to the team and the guys in the garage.”
“We ordinarily have better race pace than quali pace and we’re definitely there in the fight,” he added. “As a team, it was probably our best qualifying of the year in terms of pace but probably the worst in terms of outcome. That’s racing. I’m personally going through a tricky couple of races at the moment but we’ve got tomorrow to make up for it.”
You could understand if Team Principal Toto Wolff wasn’t too happy with how qualifying went. But instead, the Austrian put an arm around his drivers and said, “These two should never beat… themselves up because of this situation, because of crashing out. “We’ve given them a car that wasn’t on par for 10 races in a row and now we’re starting to come to terms and we’re able to drive in front, and then it can happen that you just lose the car. But I’d rather have a fast car and then a qualifying like this than not having the pace to be in the top four.”
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