Lewis Hamilton isn’t expecting too many opportunities to improve on his disappointing fifth place from qualifying, believing Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix will resemble a “train” due to the difficulty of overtaking.
Though the gap has varied at different stages this weekend, when the drivers pushed to the limit, Mercedes had no response to the pace of Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel with the three-time world champion six-tenths slower than the pole position time.
Reflecting on the final outcome, Hamilton acknowledged the struggles the Brackley team have had are not surprising, although he was surprised by how his main title rival, Vettel, was able to find a great deal of performance to claim his fourth Marina Bay pole.
“Well, we knew that we would come here and it would be difficult. I think every year we’ve come here it’s been relatively difficult for us generally, but we knew today would be tough,” the 32-year-old said.
“We definitely didn’t anticipate Ferrari would be as strong as they were, I thought Red Bull would be as quick as they were but we remained hopeful.”
As for his own performance, he added: “I got everything I could out of the car. I got everything and more, I literally threw the sink at it. I squeezed every bit out of it.”
Looking ahead to Sunday and it will likely be a case of damage limitation for the championship leader, who’s time at the top could last just one race weekend, however, Hamilton is refusing to throw in the towel on this weekend even if little seems to be in his favour.
“This is a crap track for overtaking so it’s usually just a long, long train. So it’s going to be difficult,” he claimed. “[But] the start is an opportunity, strategy, Safety Car, who knows, but tomorrow we’re just going to have to play the long game. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, so we’ll try and take that method into tomorrow.”
As for teammate Valtteri Bottas, the Finn has been struggling even more than Hamilton over the four sessions so far. In qualifying, he ended some seven-tenths off behind the Briton and, speaking afterwards, claimed his problems show that Mercedes still have plenty of areas to improve.
“The gaps are too big for us and from two weeks ago in Monza to now we are really struggling,” he said. “It just highlights we still have issues producing enough downforce, enough mechanical grip at a track like this, so that is an area we really need to work on.
“We’ve tried a lot of different set-ups this week and in Practice 3 and made big changes – bigger than we normally do, as we are so off the pace. We tried something for qualifying, but I’m not sure it was really good.
“Tomorrow is the race and we know the car is not quick enough for the podium, that’s a fact, but we need to get the other areas right and maybe it’s possible.”
