Lewis Hamilton was unable to explain his Mercedes team’s lack of pace in qualifying at the Australian Grand Prix after failing to make it into the top 10.
The seven-time champion qualified 11th in Melbourne with team-mate George Russell seventh – Hamilton has now been out-paced at all three races so far this year.
Hamilton said he had been “optimistic” of a strong showing after being fourth fastest in final practice, less than 0.1 seconds off the pace-setting Ferrari of Carlos Sainz.
But after qualifying he said: “I don’t know if it’s the wind picking up – it picked up quite a bit, same as yesterday – and then the car is just so much more on a knife edge. That’s it.”
Hamilton has qualified ninth, eighth and 11th so far this year, with Russell third at the first race in Bahrain and seventh in Saudi Arabia and Melbourne.
“It’s just a flat feeling,” Hamilton said. “It’s not great.
“[I’m] less consistent than George. He is doing a better job with the car. Three qualifyings in a row he has out-qualified me. He’s just seems to get on a lot better than I do.
“Just trying to keep my head above water and continue to realise it could be way worse.”
Mercedes entered the season believing that they had a car with which they could make progress after two seasons struggling with an aerodynamic concept different from the rest of the field.
But the team have discovered that the car lacks pace in high-speed corners – and that it does not generate the downforce on track that its simulations suggest it should.
The team are essentially still failing to understand the airflow under the car, where ground-effect ‘venturi’ tunnels develop most of the downforce.
Hamilton said: “It’s three years in a row, similar feeling. Then there’s these spikes of ‘it could be good’ like this morning. Then it disappears.
“If we can find a way of [keeping] that goodness in the car, making it more consistent and holding onto that, maybe we can be more competitive. There’s lots of work we need to do but everyone’s working as hard as they can.”
Russell was optimistic Mercedes would be more competitive in the race.
“It’s so tight out there between the top five teams bar Red Bull,” he said. “I definitely think we are going to have a better race car than qualifying car, but we know where we need to improve and that’s the high-speed corners and this circuit there are quite a few around here.
“But all to play for. The fight is on, with the Ferraris and McLarens in touching distance.
“So I think we could be seeing a two-stop race potentially, not one single driver has used the hard [tyre] and everyone will be using it tomorrow so there are a lot of unknowns for everyone.”
Carlos Sainz, right, starts on the front row of the grid on Sunday despite recent surgery to remove his appendix
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen heads into the race as a strong favourite for a third consecutive victory to follow his third consecutive pole.
Ferrari had looked the form team before qualifying, to the extent that McLaren’s Lando Norris – who starts third on the grid following a three-place grid penalty for impeding for Red Bull’s Sergio Perez – predicted either Charles Leclerc or Carlos Sainz would be on pole after Friday practice.
But Verstappen managed to work with his engineers to tune the car and by the final part of qualifying he was back in his usual untouchable form.
The star performance of the session, though, was arguably from Sainz, who was next best after Verstappen just 15 days after having surgery in Saudi Arabia after being diagnosed with appendicitis.
He said that the effects of the operation created an unusual feeling when he was driving the car, exactly as Williams driver Alex Albon – who had a similar experience in 2022 – had warned him.
“It’s exactly what Alex told me before jumping in the car,” Sainz said. “He said when he got his appendix removed, just with the G-Force, everything in the inside just feels like it’s moving more than normal and you need some confidence to brace the core and the body as you used to do before.”
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