Lewis Hamilton says the performance of his Mercedes W10 “plateaued” after practice, as he missed out on pole position at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Hamilton edged a closely-fought final practice session at the Hungaroring on Saturday but was unable to add to his tally of six pole positions at the venue.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen claimed a maiden career pole while Valtteri Bottas took second, leaving Hamilton in third place on the grid.
“For me a difficult qualifying session,” said Hamilton.
“Practice was going quite well. We knew the Red Bulls were quick – they’re always quick here.
“I think when I got into qualifying the car wasn’t the same as it was in P3 and it just was a bit of a struggle from the beginning and it kind of just plateaued there. It didn’t really get any better.
“But nonetheless we’re still there in the fight and hopefully for the race we’ll have better race pace than I did in quali.”
With Verstappen’s Red Bull team-mate Pierre Gasly down in sixth, Hamilton is hopeful that Mercedes can use a numerical advantage to attack the polesitter.
“We’re in a good position in terms of working as a team tomorrow,” he said.
“We’re in a fortunate position, potentially, if we can hold on to Max to be able to work together to pull him closer to us and give him a bit of a run for his money.
“It’s a little bit harder when you’re on your own at the front in the team, because you can come under attack from undercuts and all this sort of thing.
“We’ll see how that plays out but we’ve got a long run down to Turn 1 so hopefully we will have a nice long battle down there and then after that it’s down to team tactics.”
