Lewis Hamilton described his qualifying session as “messy” and felt he had “only one good lap” through the course of the three-part shootout in Portugal.
Hamilton set the quickest overall time from qualifying in Q2 on the Medium tyres but was unable to replicate that effort on either Soft or Medium tyres in Q3.
Hamilton was usurped in Q3 by team-mate Valtteri Bottas, who clocked the quickest time by just 0.007s, as the Finn denied the reigning World Champion a potential 100th career pole.
“It was a difficult session for everyone, it’s not that easy here, particularly as it is windy and quite slippery on this surface so it was challenging for everyone,” he said.
“It was quite a messy session for me really, Q1 wasn’t good, Q2 I only had one good lap and I would say in the whole session I only had one [good] lap, Q3 was pretty poor, Valtteri did a great job in the conditions we’re in.”
Hamilton also expanded on the difficulties drivers faced regarding the tyres and the track conditions, as well as the gusts of wind.
“You saw us doing multiple laps, the tyres are too hard here, so they don’t work really well with the surface so we have to do extra laps to get temperature in and at the end didn’t have great grip so I didn’t do the greatest job,” he said.
“Last year here we were faced with the same issue of a very peaky grip and narrow grip window, I think that’s really the case today.
“I felt quite good in FP3 today, Q2 lap felt solid, and I thought we were in the right window but it is temperatures, there are gusts of wind so you can be unlucky and get tailwinds you perhaps wouldn’t get on some corners.
“It’s a combination of things, and also not the greatest of laps from myself so I only had that one in Q2.”
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