Hamilton identifies strategy error behind Q2 knockout

Lewis Hamilton blamed his shock Q2 knockout at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on poor team strategy stemming back to a tire decision made on Friday.

Hamilton was the fastest driver at the end of Friday practice and expected to challenge for pole on Saturday, but instead he will line up 12th after missing out on a top-10 berth by 0.395s. The disappointing result followed Ferrari choosing to send Hamilton on a single set of soft tires for two flying laps during Q2. Not only was neither lap good enough for Q3, but neither was faster than Hamilton’s best time from Q1.

Teammate Charles Leclerc, meanwhile, was able to skate into the top 10 after switching from a set of soft tires to a set of the more stable mediums for his final run.

Hamilton said he would have preferred the same tire strategy but that the team’s Friday practice program had left him without enough sets of mediums to pull it off.

“The team chose to run me on the medium in FP2,” he explained. “Charles was meant to run it in the second run of FP2 but then, because everyone else wasn't out on them, opted to keep it.

“All the top 10 basically had three mediums [except me]. We knew that the medium was quicker – they said by about 0.3s or something like that – and it felt great. We should have run it in Q2.”

Hamilton said the team preferred to save his two remaining sets of medium tires for two runs in Q3.

“Well, you've got to get to Q3 first,” Hamilton said. “So ultimately it was just not the best execution. I’m definitely disappointed.”

The Briton admitted, though, that he wasn’t as comfortable in the car on Saturday as he had been on Friday, pointing to team-led setup changes leading him astray.

“One of the things that kind of factored into it was a bit of a direction the team were pushing for us to go with some of the setup,” he said. “That didn't feel as good as FP2. But I felt like we made a lot of progress, and we were looking pretty strong.

“I honestly thought I was going to be fighting for the top three today. I thought I might be able to get a pole today. I've not felt that all year. So it's definitely tough to be in 12th, but as I said, I don't feel that’s from my driving. It’s just execution needed to be better.”

Teammate Leclerc, however, had precisely the opposite feedback after his own qualifying disappointment. The Monaco native, who had taken the previous four pole positions in succession in Baku, crashed out of Q3 at Turn 15 without a time and will line up 10th.

Leclerc said the overnight changes made ahead of Saturday had improved the car, and he lamented switching from the soft tire to the medium despite pre-qualifying expectations that it would be the better performer.

“I changed the car quite a lot going into qualifying and I felt a lot better in Q1, and all the laps on the soft felt much better,” he said. “Then we went on medium, which we had kept because we thought it was the best tire, and today with these temperatures it was just impossible for me to switch them on.

“Difficult conditions or not, I don’t think that this is the reason. I think we were just lacking a lot of pace on the medium. I was probably 0.7s or 0.8s off before the mistake [touching the wall at Turn 4 in Q2], and I was pushing like crazy.

“I kind of had the same point of view as Lewis – I thought I had an advantage going into quali with the mediums, and then I put them on and I kind of regretted thinking I had an advantage because it was extremely tricky.

“We’ll look at what did change on track in order for it to be so difficult, but if you look at Q2, first run, with my medium I nearly didn’t make it through to Q2. I went long quite a few times. With the soft I didn’t have quite that feeling. Something felt off there – we’ll look into it. It was difficult.”

Despite his disappointment, Hamilton said his goal for the race remained unchanged.

“My pace was decent in FP2 – on race pace we were quickest – so I'm really hoping tomorrow that we've got decent pace,” he said. “I’ve good straight-line speed. We should hopefully be able to fight cars. So much can happen here with safety cars, all sorts of strategy can really come into play, so I'm just going to come into it as optimistic as possible.

“I'm still going to try and get into the top three. That's been my goal all week. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”