Hamilton pessimistic after struggling to fourth place

Lewis Hamilton does not rate his chances of winning Sunday's Russian Grand Prix very highly after qualifying in fourth place, half a second behind his teammate Valtteri Bottas.

Mercedes had taken 18 consecutive pole positions but was beaten by both Ferraris on Saturday, with Sebastian Vettel edging out Kimi Raikkonen by 0.059s. Bottas was only 0.095s off pole but Hamilton was 0.5s back, and the three-time world champion was not happy with the handling of his car in Sochi.

"It's one of those weekends," Hamilton said. "It's not every weekend that things go smoothly. Yesterday we struggled to get the tires into temperature. Today we got into the window, the car was completely different from yesterday. We worked towards it but it generally got worse and worse. I lost like half a second in Turn 13 in the last run, half a second through Turns 13 and 14, but I was generally struggling in the last sector.

"Tire temperature shouldn't be a problem tomorrow – yesterday it was a problem, but not anymore.

"I don't think my problem today was with the tires, it was more with the balance of the car. We had similar setups, Valtteri and I, but electronically, with the diff and everything, it wasn't best suited for me, I would say. I had big snaps of the rear end of the car in the last sector, if you see all those little tiny mistakes, they were all because the rear end was very weak.

"Currently we're fourth and it's very difficult to overtake here. Yesterday [Ferrari's] race pace was much better than ours, at least than mine. Yesterday I was more than half a second off, so currently there seems to be not many chances to beat them. But tonight we'll do some studying and we'll try to turn some things into positives and, who knows, we should hopefully be in a better position tomorrow.

Hamilton says his race pace is a big unknown due to the changes he has made to his car, but expects Bottas to be stronger based on Saturday's performance.

"I'm just hopeful it will be a race between the four of us. Yesterday's race run was really terrible, so it could be the same tomorrow, it could be better. The car was different today, compared to yesterday, but I will not find out until we get into the race.

"Taking from qualifying, with the balance of the car I had today I don't think I'll be able to push flat out from the start to the end of the race, but Valtteri may be able to – he's much happier with his balance, he did a great job today. Maybe tomorrow I'll get in the race and it will be fine – I hope that's the case but I'll find out when the lights go out."