Lewis Hamilton claims ‘messy session’ took him out of contention for Sprint pole at Austrian GP

Lewis Hamilton qualified in sixth place for the Sprint race in Austria.

Lewis Hamilton claims ‘messy session’ took him out of contention for Sprint pole at Austrian GP

Lewis Hamilton (Via: Imago)

Mercedes had seemingly resurged through its subpar form in the early phase of 2024 after securing a podium for two races in a row. Moreover, after FP1 at the Red Bull Ring, the team thought they were in the battle for pole amongst the giants. However, this all came to an abrupt end for Lewis Hamilton, who claimed the session to be a messy one.

The Austrian GP Sprint Qualifying session was ideal for many drivers. Especially SQ3, where a few drivers barely made it to the line to start a lap. Unfortunately, among all the chaos, Lewis Hamilton also did not have the best of outings.

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Mercedes were the first team to send both of their cars out. The 39-year-old led his teammate out of the pitlane, but he was unable to get into his groove and did a mediocre lap.

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I wasn't in the mix at all. The session was messy. The car felt good but we didn't have the pace to fight for pole. They weren't very clean laps.
Lewis Hamilton said post Sprint qualifying.

Hamilton reviewed his session afterward and admitted that he was not in the mix for the top spots. He further stated that the session was a total mess as cars fought each other for track position to manage to get a lap on board. But was unhappy with his efforts as George Russell claimed a lofty P4 while he salvaged a P6 behind his rival, Carlos Sainz.

Toto Wolff explained reasoning for Lewis Hamilton’s subpar qualifying session

While one Mercedes was within a tenth of the top three, the other one of Hamilton, had quite some problems. This intrigued team principal Toto Wolff to jump in and justify the Brit’s slow pace.

Mercedes' Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton
Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton (Via Imago)

The Austrian claimed the turn one to be a rally for the former world champion.

The run to turn one was like a rally, and you can't recover from that.
Toto Wolff said in post-sprint qualifying interview

The 39-year-old first had a run-in with his former teammate, Valtteri Bottas, in SQ1 that had left him untangled. This followed into the subsequent sessions as Wolff explained that Hamilton was constantly challenged by the turn and had a moment from which he was unable to recover.

Despite the underwhelming start to the weekend, the Englishman is anticipated to get back on the front foot. Thus, an interesting fight could develop at the sharp end as Hamilton would be hoping to get another sprint podium under his belt after his last one being in China a few weekends ago.

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