On Saturday morning in Austria, Lewis Hamilton woke up with a sense of disappointment; the euphoria following his third-place finish at the Spanish Grand Prix had significantly faded. The sprint qualification on Friday had not gone as he had hoped. He found himself trailing behind his teammate, George Russell, in the sprint shootout, and discovered he had been driving with floor damage.
On Friday, Hamilton narrowly avoided elimination in the first of the three phases of the sprint qualification. By the skin of his teeth, as number 13, Hamilton advanced to SQ2. However, he didn’t make it far, ending up in the middle of the pack: the seven-time world champion will start at 4.00 AM UST as the sixth in the sprint race. That’s two places behind Russell.
“I’m not satisfied with any of the laps,” Hamilton shook his head as he reflected on the sprint shootout. “It was tough, it was messy.” According to the Brit, this doesn’t bode well for the sprint race, and he doesn’t anticipate a good result: “We won’t be able to overtake much and therefore won’t be able to move up much. Our focus is now on the qualification and the race on Sunday.”
