Lewis Hamilton has asked his Mercedes team to investigate why he couldn’t match team-mate Nico Rosberg’s pace in Bahrain after the German qualified on pole.
Hamilton meanwhile could only secure fourth – which becomes ninth after his gearbox penalty is applied – some four tenths slower than Rosberg’s Q3 lap.
It’s the first time he has been outqualified by his team-mate since he joined Mercedes at the start of the season.
“The guys are just looking at the data right now; I just asked them to because the car didn’t feel the same as it did in P3,” Hamilton said. “P3 was a big improvement; in P1 and P2 we were having some problems with the car, we fixed them overnight and the car felt much better in P3 but when we got to qualifying it went back to feeling very similar to what it like it felt like in P1 and P2, for whatever reason.
“But Nico did a great job today, I wasn’t able to match his pace and tomorrow it’s going to be a tough race for me from ninth place but I will do the best job I can.”
He explained that he didn’t take a different approach to qualifying with his penalty in mind.
“We try to get up as high as possible, try to take pole position so then when you take the penalty you lose as little position as possible.”
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