Lewis Hamilton has admitted he couldn’t extract the same lap time as Mercedes Formula 1 team-mate George Russell in qualifying at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
Mercedes had shown an encouraging pace through practice at Imola with its latest updates, with both Hamilton and Russell situated inside the top five places in FP2.
But while Russell came within 0.001s from edging Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz to a potential fourth place on the grid, Hamilton ended up behind RB’s Yuki Tsunoda in eighth.
Hamilton, who is now 1-6 down in the head-to-head against Russell this season, conceded that his 0.25-second deficit to the sister car was a representative gap in Q3.
“I think George’s lap was the maximum pace-wise of what our car could do. I couldn’t reach that today,” Hamilton said.
“Yesterday was looking strong. But good, positive to see us pace-wise [be] a little bit closer.
Mercedes has combated inconsistencies with its W15 car throughout this season and Hamilton has proclaimed that it is still a problem the marque has not resolved.
“That’s one thing we don’t fully understand is like on Friday, we seem a bit quicker and then on Saturday, we seem to lose a little bit [of] time to the others,” he noted.
“But George was pretty quick out there. I think he really got to check the set-up this weekend, like he has done most of this year. For me, it worked differently.”
Despite the front-running sides adding updates over the last two rounds, Hamilton insists that their respective strengths and weaknesses have remained unchanged.
“You see the differences between the cars still, weekend in, weekend out, upgrade after upgrade,” he cited.
“And then the same things have been said each weekend and the straight speed or this other thing. So some stage they’ll change it.”
With Imola standing out as a circuit with limited overtaking opportunities, Hamilton has expressed that his sole target in the race is “to get as many points as I can”.
Regarding his prospects for tomorrow’s 63-lap encounter, the Briton added: “We’ll also try and get Tsunoda if we can, that’ll be helpful.
“And then after that, I think it’s really just about managing the tyres and the cars ahead of George are faster. So that’s kind of where we are.”
