It was a disappointing afternoon for the champion-elect Lewis Hamilton, who could only manage to qualify P5, putting him on the third row of the grid. The last time Hamilton couldn't qualify on the front row at COTA, was during his first year with Mercedes in 2013.
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The British driver didn't shy away from accepting the blame for not being able to lock his Mercedes W10 ahead of the Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc.
Talking to the media after the qualifying, Hamilton said, "It was my fault."
“It’s nothing to do with the car, it’s just me”
“I just didn’t pull the laps out together today and clearly the car had the capability to be on the front row and I just didn’t do it today, so it was my fault,"
"But I’ll try and rectify it tomorrow.”
While Lewis' teammate and championship rival, Valtteri Bottas was able to put in a stellar lap to secure himself the pole position, Lewis' pace was surprisingly slow. In fact, Hamilton abandoned his final push for an improvement during the last minutes of Q3.
The last time Hamilton failed to qualify on the front row at COTA was in 2013. Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff appeared to be excited as Bottas managed to keep both Vettel and Verstappen at bay, he also sounded dissatisfied with Lewis' qualifying result.
“Shame for Lewis, so we can see what we need to do tomorrow with strategy,” expressed Wolff.
“With an aggressive strategy we can still compete for the win, but it was not his qualifying – very unusual – so we will have to find out what happened.”
Lewis Hamilton currently holds a 74 points lead over his championship rival Valtteri Bottas. In order to win a 6th F1 world title, Hamilton must outscore Bottas by 4 points, which translates into Hamilton finishing at least 9th with the fastest lap or 8th and higher if Bottas wins the race from pole.
On the other hand, Bottas must win the race and hope for Hamilton to finish 9th without a fastest lap or lower in order to keep his championship hopes alive.
While the permutations are greatly in favor of Lewis Hamilton, it can't be disregarded that Bottas starts from the pole tomorrow, and half of the races at COTA since 2012 have been won from pole.
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