Mercedes dish out excuses for Hamilton's defeat to Russell in qualifying

In a debrief on the Mercedes YouTube channel, Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director at Mercedes, cited a gust of wind as the reason behind Hamilton suddenly losing a lot of time between Q2 and Q3. 

Mercedes explain why Hamilton lost time

"Well we were pretty pleased with the lap time he did in Q2, and were hoping to repeat that in Q3," Shovlin said. "There wasn’t an issue with the grip initially and the start of the lap was actually quite good. Now, he was unlucky as he got to Turn 11, he got a gust of wind that was from behind, and what that does it is it actually drops the amount of downforce on the car quite significantly. As he went into that corner, he had quite a big oversteer. That then puts temperature in the tyres and once that temperature is in, in a very tight twisty section, there is nowhere for them to cool down. And that is what causes the loss of grip. Had it not been for the gust of wind, it would have been a better lap for sure.

"The other thing that cost us was we only had one new soft tyre by that point, so it wasn’t like he would have another go and try to repeat it. So frustrating, because by that point, the car was working well for him, and he was obviously driving it very well. It was a shame that we couldn’t repeat that lap when it mattered."

Hamilton only qualified P8, behind Mercedes teammate George Russell, but his Q2 lap time would have been good enough to put him in front of Russell in P7. Russell has out-qualified Hamilton five times now this season, with Hamilton only beating his fellow Brit in qualifying in Japan.