While Hamilton was frustrated with a P6 starting grid slot, his team-mate was slightly more satisfied. George Russell ended the sprint shootout in P4 with only Max Verstappen and the two McLaren cars ahead of him.
After placing sixth in the sprint shootout at the Austrian Grand Prix on Friday, Lewis Hamilton was left to lament what he called his “very bad laps.” Mercedes showed remarkable speed on the hard compound tire over the weekend in Spielberg, perhaps carrying over their momentum from Barcelona. This did not, however, transfer into a sprint shootout performance.
Hamilton’s session was a chaotic one personally. The great British racer had to run off sequence to his rivals at the beginning of the session after running off the circuit, but he finally recorded the sixth-fastest time in SQ3. He commented, “I wasn’t in the mix at all, the whole session was pretty disastrous from our point of view,” after finishing his sprint shootout. We didn’t have the pace to be on pole, but we had some really awful laps. Practice went well, and the vehicle felt fantastic. “We’ll do our hardest, but I don’t think we’re going to overtake this time. Since the race is usually not too exciting, I believe that the main goal will be to improve on yesterday’s qualifying.