It’s [Bleep]! Trust me, it hurts. Lewis Hamilton admits he’s not fighting for the title. What did he say about Mercedes?

Mercedes has had a very poor qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix, with seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton very disappointed with his result. He has admitted that there is no question of any title fight this year and is very unhappy with the state of his monoposto. So what is his statement?

The worst qualifying result in a decade – that’s how Mercedes boss Toto Wolff commented on Saturday’s action, with Hamilton up to seventh fastest time and George Russell eighth.

But that might not be the worst yet. The Mercedes was even slower than the Alpine of Fernando Alonso, who was faster by about two tenths of a second. What’s more, Hamilton lost a whopping 1.8 seconds to fastest Max Verstappen.

However, thanks to penalties to several drivers for swapping power unit components, Hamilton and Russell will move up the order. Below you can see what the grid will look like for the Belgian Grand Prix.

A total of seven drivers are penalized in Belgium, and the grid layout looks very interesting indeed. Hamilton has been on the podium five times in a row, and Mercedes has brought a big package of modifications to Spa.

However, it seems that the German team has not yet been able to activate it, even though the race pace is always very different from the qualifying pace.

Hamilton’s reaction to the poor pace and poor result

Asked if Hamilton was disappointed given the pace Mercedes had before the summer break, he replied as follows.

“I don’t want to use the word disappointed because we have to remember that there are 2,000 people working in the factory. It’s hard to do it right. Of course, I wish we could do it right and transfer the improvements (to performance – ed.) and I wish we could fight at the front. But it is what it is,” said Hamilton, whose words were quoted by Motorsport.

“Believe me, it hurts. But at the moment you just have to laugh and say I’m not fighting for the title. If I get too serious, I have a responsibility to try to keep morale high, we can’t get discouraged. But it’s rubbish, it’s slow (Mercedes’ monoposto – ed.),” he added.

“It’s crazy, we’re really slow, but we start fourth. Maybe we have a chance to get on the podium, who knows? We have to stay optimistic. I don’t think it (the car) told me today that it wanted to win. But maybe I’ll talk to him tonight and tomorrow (at the start of the Belgian GP on Sunday) it will be better,” he concluded

F1, Motorsport