Wolff swallows another defeat: 'We are disappointed it didn't work out'

Lewis Hamilton cannot wait before the Mercedes W14 can be put in the museum forever. The fact is that the former world champion has one more Grand Prix to run with the car he detests, Sunday at the concluding race in Abu Dhabi. That race will see Hamilton start from eleventh place, while teammate George Russell will start fourth. Not rankings that make team boss Toto Wolff exuberant.

"FP3 felt strong so we're disappointed that we didn't manage to put it together in Qualifying," reported the Austrian. "Both Lewis and George struggled with grip and overall performance of the car. Our expectations obviously were higher but P4 was the maximum we could achieve today with George and I think we can be content with that.

"Lewis had a more difficult time, and was knocked out in Q2 by just a few milliseconds. We need to understand why we struggled in qualifying after such a promising FP3 and how we can maximize our performance tomorrow. It was a challenging session for all teams and the field is so close together, so we need to work hard overnight and give it our all tomorrow to end the season on a positive note and secure our position in the Constructor's Championship."

Mercedes confident about long runs

Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes' Trackside Engineering Director says of qualifying: "George had a really solid run over the three practice sessions and it felt like we might have done a bit better than fourth today but it was a decent lap, just seemed that in the cooler conditions we were lacking the strengths that we'd had on a hotter track", said Shovlin, who is confident of a better Sunday.

"We've done decent long run work this weekend, plenty of laps and hopefully we have a good handle on how the tyres are going to work. Hopefully we can have a strong race."