Lewis Hamilton said it was “just my luck” after a strange incident with a bollard led to his elimination in the first round of qualifying in his final grand prix as a Mercedes driver.
His final run was compromised from the beginning as he found himself in a queue of cars and had to run close behind Jack Doohan’s Alpine.He was on course to improve his time but suffered a bizarre incident at the end of his lap. It began when Hamilton caught Kevin Magnussen as they passed through the left-handers which leads drivers under the hotel.
While the Haas driver jumped to the inside of turn 14 to allow Hamilton past, he knocked a bollard loose at the inside of the corner. It fell into the path of Hamilton’s car, which collected it on the W15’s T-tray.
“You couldn’t have timed it more perfect, that bollard,” said Hamilton. “It was meant to be.
“I was really hopeful, I really thought that we had a chance at getting the podium. The car was feeling good but it wasn’t meant to be in the end. I know I did everything right, and I’m confident that I’ve taken the right steps this weekend. So we’ll try and fight from there.”
Hamilton set a 1’23.887 with his last run, which left him 18th, just under a tenth of a second away from beating Fernando Alonso to the final place in Q2.
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“It’s just my luck, but it’s okay,” he told Sky afterwards. “We tried so hard with set-up, we got the car in a great place, and it was looking good in P3, so I was really thinking maybe a podium was possible this weekend.
“Then the timing was not optimised for the session. I was the last one on the track, and obviously I ended up behind one of the Alpines right in the end, so I just ran out of time.”
Hamilton qualified 18th. However he stands to gain two places from drivers ahead with grid penalties: Alexander Albon and Charles Leclerc.
This article will be updated
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Riccard
7th December 2024, 15:07
Hamilton’s made plenty of mistakes under pressure this year, but this wasn’t one of them
First run he was only just behind Russell
Second run he was quicker through the first two sectors
Purely the bollard that made the difference (though it also didn’t help that the car was never one of the fastest and they always semmed to be fighting for ~5-8th)
Ben
7th December 2024, 15:16
+1 a shame for him but hopefully he has the race pace to make it back into the top 5. He’s looked quicker than Russell all weekend but I’m not sure Mercedes really have the pace for a podium.
I suspect Haas,Bottas etc will fall back on tyre wear as Hamilton had looked impressive in practice. It’d be nice to see him leave Mercedes with a good result, but starting p16 it’s going to be tough.
I remember his last race for McLaren didn’t end well and his move to Mercedes was the right one, so maybe this will be the same. Ending on a low before the high of next year.
Craig
7th December 2024, 15:22
His last race with McLaren was going well, battling with Button over the lead until Hulkenburg locked up and speared into him. I’m confident he can get into the points but I’d be surprised if he’s higher then 5th.
Jere (@jerejj)
7th December 2024, 15:13
Magnussen couldn’t really do anything differently.
Craig
7th December 2024, 15:20
Bar stop on track, but I suspect he thought he’d let everyone past, realized he hadn’t and jumped to the only ‘out of the way’ place he could.
MichaelN
7th December 2024, 15:41
Seems like he could; 19 other drivers didn’t have the same problem.
Kribana (@krichelle)
7th December 2024, 15:16
This is not the first time Mercedes have given their drivers problems by sending them out in the wrong place and timing this season, and on most occasions one of both was knocked out of Q1 or Q2.
Alonslow
7th December 2024, 15:21
Kevin got the right item at the right time
Edvaldo
7th December 2024, 15:32
Opens the lap with 4 seconds left and the track packed with slow cars.
What were they expecting?
MichaelN
7th December 2024, 15:44
That the FIA enforces their own rules? That is: “It is not permitted to drive any car unnecessarily slowly (..) at any time.”
This idea that it’s normal for there to be cars loitering around in qualifying is just not normal in racing. It’s an F1 problem.
lynn-m
7th December 2024, 15:53
Because F1 is the only category on the planet that are ridiculously temperature sensitive, have patheticly small working windows and such high starting pressures.
In basically every other category you can just drive out of the pits and drive conservatively on your out lap but in F1 if you do that your starting your lap with the tires too hot, pressures too high & with them been outside of the operating window they will be offering no grip after just a few corners and probably grained by the end of the lap.
If Pirelli supplied them with better tires then they wouldn’t need to do so much slow driving to prep them on the out laps. This was never an issue back when Bridgestone & Michelin were supplying F1 with proper racing tires.
lynn-m
7th December 2024, 15:55
That first line should read ‘Because F1 is the only category on the planet that has such awful tires which are ridiculously temperature sensitive, have patheticly small working windows and such high starting pressures.’.
MichaelN
7th December 2024, 20:00
You’re absolutely right, of course. The tyres are indeed a joke.
I have no idea what Pirelli thinks it’s getting out of this. Perhaps the ‘Pirelli = F1’ connection is enough for the average viewer.
SPArtacus
7th December 2024, 16:26
During the first half of the season, Aston Martin did this to Alonso four times before he decided to start calling his own timing. Twice he couldn’t even make the line in time. Not surprisingly, 3 of the 4 times Stroll “out qualified” him were during these incidents.
McLaren screwed Piastri the same way in Silverstone. And I know Ferrari did it at least twice to their drivers.
F1 engineers have no common sense. They’ll listen to their spreadsheets without consideration for whether going at the last possible second will compromise them even more by stressing out the drivers, putting them in dirty air when they have to run too close to another car to make the line, etc. let alone simply not making it in time to start a lap at all due to traffic.
OJ
7th December 2024, 15:48
Hamilton has been beaten by Button, Rosberg and now Russell. Fact.
Icarus
9th December 2024, 14:05
Ok…..
Verstappen was beaten by Ricciardo, who no longer even drives because his performance fell off so badly. Fact.
See how dumb these both sound?
Osnola
7th December 2024, 16:26
I do not get it why toto needed to rubb it in extra.
If he said bad luck or sonething i can understand. But “bad indeed”?
But listening to the voice of lewis: he was seriously down and toto did not supported him there.
Joe Pineapples
7th December 2024, 16:43
Surely he thought Lewis was talking about the bollard, and agreeing.
Ajaxn
7th December 2024, 17:10
He is responding to the questioner, whose question we can only infer.
‘was it bad luck?’
Ajaxn
7th December 2024, 17:07
The question now is will those dumb bollards be kept in place for the race? if so, i can see more incidents like this one. Does anyone know if these bollards were hit during practice?
Craig
7th December 2024, 20:50
Far as I know that’s the first time an F1 car has hit that particular bollard (I wasn’t even aware one was there until now). But yes, they will be kept there as it’s to discourage drivers cutting the corner which they will do of it’s not there
Applebook
7th December 2024, 23:45
What’s the big deal? Hamilton likely would have been easily eliminated in Q2 anyway or would have bottled it in the final sector even without the incident. The Mercedes just wasn’t that quick, as even George was way off the pace in the end. If George qualifies P7, then Hamilton is eliminated in Q2.