Lewis Hamilton’s seemingly lacklustre qualifying result on Friday which saw him secure ninth spot on the grid ahead of the 2024 Formula 1 season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix was the net result of an overnight setup change to put a greater emphasis on race pace.
Hamilton topped the second practice session on Thursday evening in Bahrain but that pace didn’t translate into Friday’s running.
12th in Friday practice was backed up by securing the penultimate spot during the Q3 top-10 shootout in qualifying, 0.531s adrift of polesitter Max Verstappen.
George Russell meanwhile, placed his Mercedes in third, but Hamilton credits the disparity to a change in set-up and remains happy with his W15 machine.
“Yesterday George [Russell] and I were identical car set-ups and the car was feeling great and then we veered off,” Hamilton said.
“He went one way and I went the other. You could say the one I was on was not good on a single lap. I hope that it’s good in the race.
“I wasn’t comfortable with my race pace and so I changed the car to hopefully make the race pace better.
“There’s a lot of degradation with the rears and race pace is really everything here. Obviously position counts as well.”
Russell was 0.306s shy of pole and less than a tenth back from second place Charles Leclerc in qualifying as the order behind the reigning World Champion was tight in Friday’s qualifying.
Hamilton credited Russell’s strong showing to the work done by the Mercedes team members back in Brackley for turning things around from last year’s W14 and reiterated that his change in set-up direction ruled him out from showing the one-lap pace gains made in the W15.
“George’s position is a testament to the job everyone has done at the factory and finally giving us a car that we can fight with,” Hamilton said.
“I just didn’t utilise that today when I made that set-up change. I put something on the car that we haven’t put on for the last two years and I was hoping it would be ok.
“I decided to stick with it and yeah, it wasn’t nice necessarily to drive.”
Regardless of set-up changes, Hamilton was adamant that the W15, the final Mercedes Formula 1 he will drive before his impending switch to rivals Ferrari in 2025, is a vast improvement of its predecessor.
“The car is really fantastic, it is a real big improvement from the previous years,” he said.
“A lot more stable, a lot more fun to drive but we still have work to do as you can see. But for George to be three-tenths off Max [Verstappen], it’s incredible.
“It shows what’s possible and I think we just got to continue to add performance. If that’s our platform from here, we can chase through the rest of the season.”
Ultimately, it wasn’t Hamilton’s day in qualifying but the seven-time World Champion remains optimistic the Mercedes squad has a strong platform to conduct its 2024 campaign with, as he seeks to end his barren run of two straight seasons without a race victory.
“For the first qualifying session to be as poor as that, so much preparation went into today and then it didn’t go the way… But that’s racing.
“But in terms of season, to know that we have a package that we can potentially fight with is really pleasing.”
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