Lewis Hamilton says he has “no hope” for the Brazilian Grand Prix after finishing 16th in Q1, struggling with an “undrivable” W15.
Hamilton’s experience at the Brazilian Grand Prix, where he is wearing a helmet inspired by Ayrton Senna, is not going as planned, and he might leave the Interlagos circuit without scoring any points.
At least, that’s what he expects after qualifying.
Hamilton placed 11th in Saturday’s Sprint race before heavy rain hit the track, causing the FIA to postpone qualifying until Sunday morning.
Though it was still raining, the conditions improved, and Hamilton quickly got on track. However, he found himself in trouble when Q1 was red-flagged due to Franco Colapinto’s crash at Turn 3. His teammate, George Russell, was also near the bottom five, putting pressure on Mercedes as more rain began to fall.
Even after improving his times to get out of the drop zone, Hamilton kept falling back into the bottom five and ended qualifying in 16th place.
“Damn car!” he expressed to Mercedes over the radio, while Russell advanced with the third fastest time.
As Russell stayed on track to qualify his W15 in second place behind Lando Norris, Hamilton spoke to the media about his brief session.
“I’m not going to be negative,” he said. “It is what it is. “I don’t have any hopes for the race. Just going to do what I can do.
“With the car I have right now, it’s the worst I’ve ever driven, so I probably won’t get very far with it. “Maybe I’ll start from the pit lane and… I don’t know, we’ll see, but it’s undrivable.”
Hamilton is likely to start in 15th place due to Max Verstappen’s penalty, or possibly from the pit lane. However, that could change because five drivers—Colapinto, Carlos Sainz, Lance Stroll, Fernando Alonso, and Alex Albon—crashed during qualifying.
All of these drivers, except Colapinto, qualified ahead of Hamilton, but with only a short break of three hours between qualifying and the race, their teams are racing against time to fix their cars for the Brazilian Grand Prix.
