'We couldn't match the Ferraris' - Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton admits he didn't think there was a chance he could have taken pole position in Hungary, as Ferrari eased to a one-two finish in qualifying.

The Mercedes driver has only managed to top one session this weekend, when he outdid Sebastian Vettel's time at the end of Q2. In the lead-up to qualifying, Hamilton ended the final practice session close to 1.5 seconds off the pace. To make matters worse, Hamilton sent multiple radio messages back to his pit wall during qualifying complaining of vibrations coming from his tires.

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"I don't think there was any moment when we had a shot at pole," Hamilton said.
"We couldn't match the Ferraris' times today. The vibrations I had didn't cause any issue to do with the balance, what happens is that it's like a road car tire, so when you have an imbalanced wheel, as soon as you go down the straight it's almost like having a flat spot before you've even started."

Ferrari has had the edge over Mercedes throughout the course of the weekend, which has prompted Hamilton to push the car's limits even further, resulting in rare mistakes by the triple world champion. During his first run in the final session of qualifying, Hamilton ran wide at Turn 4 and off the circuit, leadng him to back out of his first attempt.

"When you drive it to a certain limit it feels fine. But then you see Ferrari's time and you think you can push further, so when you drive 110 percent the car is more on a knife edge. You are just taking it into places it doesn't want to go.

"It looks like their [Ferrari's] car is just suited to the track more, I mean, these cars aren't really moving anywhere, so it looks like they might have more downforce on – and it looks like they applied that in Monaco as well."