Going into the fourth race of the season in Russian Federation, the defending Formula One champion wanted to stage a comeback after already dropping 36 points behind his teammate Nico Rosberg.
Advertisement
The 31-year-old Briton, who trails his German team-mate by 36 points in this year’s drivers’ title race after just three events, clocked a best lap time of one minute and 36.403 seconds in the final minute of a busy session run in cool conditions at the Sochi Autodrom.
The Briton has hit trouble in every race so far this season, finishing second, third and seventh while Rosberg has taken three victories. I don’t know where I’m going to start yet – we’ll wait to see how that unfolds.
Rosberg said: “Of course the others have been unfortunate, extremely unfortunate, and that makes my race a little easier tomorrow but an F1 race is never easy. The opposition are still there”.
Sebastian Vettel was second quickest but will drop five places due to a gearbox change, promoting third place Valtteri Bottas to the front row.
Hamilton, already under investigation from the stewards for failing to negotiate a block placed in the run-off area at turn two, is set to start only 10th.
“I think we have eight power units out there [in all the Mercedes-powered cars on the grid] and seven didn’t have any problems and one had a problem twice”. That doesn’t happen for us. “It’s a long race, it’s a long way, especially around here there’s a lot of things that can happen”, he said.
Australian Daniel Ricciardo, who tested a new head protection device at the start of the session and has finished fourth in all three races, was sixth and fifth for Red Bull in the two sessions.
The engine fitted to the auto has a new turbocharger and MGU-H – his third of the season as they were replaced after the China failure.
Carlos Sainz was 11th in his Toro Rosso followed by 2009 champion Jenson Button of McLaren, Nico Hulkenberg in his Force India and two-time champion Fernando Alonso in the second McLaren.
At the front, Rosberg was quickest ahead of Hamilton, but the keenly-anticipated battle for pole between the two was swiftly cancelled by the sight of the champion’s auto in pieces in the team garage.
Advertisement
“It’s the same power that i lost in China”, said the Mercedes driver to Sky Sport after coming off the track. For Hamilton it’s a further blow to his title challenge, which he said on Thursday had to get back on track this weekend.
