'I thought I was going to be fighting for the top three,' Hamilton claims

“The medium tyre was just much quicker,” Hamilton this bluntly at the end of qualifying, admitting that choosing to run the softs on his final Q2 lap was a mistake.

When asked to elaborate on the tyre choice, the Briton added: “Basically, the team chose to run me on the medium one. Charles was meant to run it in the second round of Q2, but then opted—because everyone else wasn’t out on them—to keep it. And then all the top 10 basically had three mediums.

He then added: “One of the things that kind of factored into it was a bit of direction that the team were pushing for us to go with some of the setup. That didn’t feel as good as P2, but I felt like we made a lot of progress and we were looking really strong.

Hamilton finally admitted that, in his view, a top-three finish was within reach today: “Honestly, I thought I was going to be fighting for the top three today. I thought I might be able to get both in. That’s how much I hadn’t felt that early on. So it’s definitely tough to be in 12th, but as I said, I don’t think that’s… I don’t feel that’s down to my driving. It’s just execution.”

The Briton had shown strong pace all weekend, consistently running near the front in all three practice sessions.

However, from the opening minutes of Q1 it was clear Hamilton no longer had the same feeling, something confirmed by his elimination in Q2. His teammate, meanwhile, did manage to make it through to Q3, only to crash into the wall.

Just as in Hungary and Monza, Hamilton will once again have to fight his way back through the field tomorrow. Ferrari, however, showed promising race pace during their long-run simulation in FP2.

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