Hamilton sheds light on 'dodgy' reason for missing out on Madring pole

Hamilton finished in fourth place on Saturday afternoon, and ahead of his teammate Charles Leclerc. Over the team radio, he said immediately after his lap: "It’s a dodgy set of tyres. Sorry guys, I gave it everything."

The Briton was on provisional pole after the first attempts at the Madring in Q3. Speaking to GPblog, among others, after the session, he explained why he ultimately dropped to fourth place. "Yeah, qualifying was generally pretty straightforward. No real issues. Yeah, I felt pretty awesome in Q3, and then just didn't have any more grip or power in the last one.

Looking ahead, the seven-time world champion hopes to finish on the podium today, but he does not expect it to be a simple task.

He added: "We sometimes go to hot places and deg is okay, and then sometimes it's not okay. When you go to like Austria, for example, it's hot and our deg was terrible, so I really have no idea what to expect tomorrow. I'm just going to have fun, that’s all I can say.

"It's just going to have real fun, not put too much pressure on it. The fact is, the guys that we're competing with, one of them is ahead of us, particularly, they're just quicker. And so we're going to just try and do our best to hold on," the Ferrari driver concluded.