Lewis Hamilton believes a top ten finish on Sunday will be difficult despite the pace advantage the Mercedes has over its rivals.
The Briton looks likely to start from the pitlane after an engine fire during the first part of qualifying ended his session before he could even set a timed lap.
Despite finishing second in Germany last weekend after starting from a similar position, he doesn’t believe a similar feat can be achieved in Hungary where overtaking is much harder.
“I think it is getting to the point where it is beyond bad luck,” he said.
“I bailed out of that timed lap I was doing. Something happened to my brakes, something on the brake system failed, I had to engage some settings to try and correct it and then the engine just died.
“I thought, I’m right next to the pit entry, I’ll roll back and try and get them to fix it. Then I looked in my mirrors and I was on fire.
“It was on fire, but I was still trying to get it to the garage, I thought maybe they could do something, but they said stop, stop, stop.
“I don’t know what I can do tomorrow. It’s a track you can’t overtake on. I’ll struggle to get into the top ten tomorrow, definitely the top five.”
Mercedes chairman Niki Lauda called Hamilton’s constant reliability troubles unfair and said pole and a race win was almost certain at a track where the 29-year-old usually excels.
“It’s completely unfair, especially here where it is so hard to overtake,” he said. “Two races in a row.
“He would have been fastest today and won the race no question.”
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