Lewis Hamilton has added fuel to the speculation about his qualifying performances, suggesting that ‘other things’ came into his poor showing on Saturday at the Canadian Grand Prix.
The seven-time world champion was beaten by team-mate George Russell in qualifying for the eighth time in nine races in 2024 in Montreal, lining up seventh on the grid while his Mercedes colleague secured pole position.
Hamilton made up good ground during a wet-to-dry outing in Sunday’s race, but was ultimately unable to get the better of Russell, who snatched the final podium position off the Brit on the penultimate lap of the race.
In Monaco, Hamilton suggested that something strange is afoot in qualifying between the two Mercedes cars, before stating that he doesn’t expect to beat Russell again on Saturdays this season, hinting at favouritism towards the other side of the garage. After the race in Montreal, he made more intriguing comments regarding the topic.
Assessing his weekend with Sky Sports F1, Hamilton was in a miserable mood. “It was just, over the weekend, a really poor performance from myself,” he said.
“Yesterday… some other things came into it yesterday, but mostly myself, and then today, one of the worst races I have ever driven. Just lots of mistakes. But obviously, if I had qualified better, I would have been in a better position.
“It is what it is, I will go back to the drawing board. On a positive note, big, big thank you to everyone back at the factory, because it is becoming a car we can fight with. And that’s the real positive going into this next part of the season.
“I know we’ll have hopefully some more upgrades coming along the way so it’s going to be a close battle and if I get my head on right, I’ll get better results at some stage.”
The consequence for Hamilton is that he now sits 14 points behind Russell in the Drivers’ Championship standings, although both drivers should take confidence from the boost in performance that Mercedes enjoyed from their latest rounds of upgrades.
Toto Wolff’s outfit have been languishing behind Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari throughout the opening eight rounds of the season, but the ninth race of the year marked the eight-time world champions’ return to race-win contention.
