MELBOURNE, Australia – After qualifying 11th for the Australian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton said he is struggling to keep the good moments alive with his Mercedes car.
Hamilton and Mercedes had appeared to make a step forward in final practice at the Albert Park circuit, host of Sunday’s race, but the seven-time world champion failed to make it into Q3.
Teammate George Russell qualified seventh but Hamilton said the improved feeling from a few hours earlier had disappeared.
“I mean, it’s three years in a row, similar feeling… But then there’s these spikes of ‘Ah, it could be good’, like this morning, but then it kind of disappears,” Hamilton said on Saturday afternoon.
“If we can work out a way of finding that goodness in the car and making it more consistent and holding onto that, then we can be more competitive. There’s lots of work we need to do, but everyone’s working as hard as they can.”
Hamilton said circuit conditions had changed at a crucial moment.
“[Final practice] felt really good for us and I was really feeling optimistic going into qualifying,” he said. “But then, I don’t know if it was the wind picking up — the wind picked up quite a bit, same as yesterday — and then the car is just so much more on a knife-edge here.”
Hamilton will have the Aston Martins and RB’s Yuki Tsunoda starting between him and Russell, but he suggested a tough race was in store on Sunday.
“I haven’t done a long run so I don’t really know, but the other car has,” Hamilton said on his outlook for Sunday’s race. “I think everyone’s so fast, so… But it’s a new day, we’ll still try. I’ll give it everything and move forwards.”
Hamilton was then asked if this year was similar to 2022, when he experimented throughout the year to find answers to Mercedes’ erratic car, which suffered from the infamous “porpoising” phenomenon.
When asked if he and Russell are still splitting strategies, Hamilton said: “In 2022 we weren’t splitting. George was doing one thing and I was trying every set-up that there was to try and help the team try and find options and figure out how we can fix it.
“It’s pretty much the same, a little bit similar to this year, I’m trying lots of different things but I think this weekend we’re much closer.”
