27 May 2017 – Lewis Hamilton believes his Monaco Grand Prix is “pretty much done” after he dropped out in the second phase of qualifying on Saturday.
Hamilton led proceedings in Thursday’s first session, but set-up changes left him only eighth in second practice, before recovering to fifth when action resumed on Saturday morning.
However, Hamilton was down in 10th in Q1 and had to abandon his first run in Q2 after sliding through Massenet, narrowly missing the barriers as he gathered the moment.
Hamilton’s benchmark left him a lowly 14th and his final attempt at reaching Q3 was only on the brink of the top 10 times, before the situation became academic when Stoffel Vandoorne crashed.
Hamilton was forced to back off, leaving him in 14th place, though will be promoted one spot on the grid due to Jenson Button’s engine-related penalty.
“That’s pretty much the weekend done, so tomorrow will just be driving around in whatever position outside of the top 10,” said Hamilton.
“I will try and get up as high as I can but it’s hard to overtake here, so it’s going to be a nice Sunday drive tomorrow, I’d imagine.”
Hamilton, who admitted he could not explain his pace deficit, labelled the timing of Vandoorne’s crash as a “little bit unfortunate” but conceded a leading position would have been unlikely.
“I think that lap may have just got me into the top 10,” he said on the effort he was producing prior to Vandoorne’s crash.
“Then I probably would have struggled to be in the top five [in Q3] with the pace I had, whatever issue I had with the car.
“It’s great to see Valtteri [what] was able to extract; the performance of the car shows we’re not terrible here and we’ll have to figure out why I wasn’t able to be up with him.”
http://www.gpupdate.net/en/f1-news/353728/hamilton-weekend-done-after-q2-exit/
I don’t think Hamilton will run around in 10th. I think he will force his way through or crash.