After his qualifying woes on Friday – which marked the first time neither Mercedes made Q3 since 2012 – Hamilton was left dejected, and the sprint did not help.
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Lewis Hamilton wasn’t happy after qualifying 13th on Friday evening at Imola – and his problems were only made worse after finishing 14th in Saturday’s Sprint. After his qualifying woes on Friday – which marked the first time neither Mercedes made Q3 since 2012 – Hamilton was left dejected, and the sprint did not help.
“Well, I lost points… well I lost positions, so it wasn’t a rescue. Unable to do that today, unfortunately,” he said. “The car has felt like it’s felt all year, not that great. We’re faced with this issue, there’s nothing I can do. All I’ve been doing is trying to do the best job I can: some weekends it goes well, some weekends it doesn’t. We’re obviously not fighting for the championship, we’re fighting to get into the top 10 at the moment.”
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George Russell qualified 11th for Mercedes after outqualifying Hamilton for the second time this season, but he made no net positions and will start outside the top 10 in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix on Sunday. The Briton, on the other hand, said he saw the race as an opportunity.
“I expect tomorrow there will be more opportunity, but we need to do something different to our rivals to be able to move forward, because it was clear that today it wasn’t easy,” he said.
Max Verstappen won the first Sprint of 2022, passing Charles Leclerc with two laps to go and securing pole position for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix on Sunday. The grid for this Sprint was set in the wet qualifying session on Friday, with Verstappen taking pole over Leclerc and Lando Norris leading Kevin Magnussen off the second row. The top eight, rather than the top three, now receive points in a redesigned format, providing even more motivation to give it their all on a rainy Saturday afternoon.
Read More – Emilia Romagna GP 2022: Schedule, timing, live streaming details
As the lights went out, it was Leclerc who took the lead from Verstappen, much to the delight of the tifosi – only for the Safety Car to intervene when Zhou Guanyu (DNF) and Pierre Gasly (P19) collided through Turn 9 on Lap 1. On Lap 5, green-flag racing would resume, with Leclerc leading Verstappen and Norris.
