Lewis Hamilton was unable to put together a clean lap and was eliminated immediately in Q1 during Las Vegas qualifying. The seven-time world champion struggled to bring his tyres up to temperature, throwing away the chance for one final lap due to confusion caused by red lights on the track.
In almost 20 years of Formula 1, Lewis Hamilton had never set the slowest time in qualifying for a Grand Prix. It happened today in the official session for the Las Vegas Grand Prix, where the seven-time champion endured an extremely difficult qualifying marked by both misfortune and mistakes.
Being knocked out in Q1 after showing in all three practice sessions that he had the pace to fight for a strong grid position is a real blow for Hamilton.
His situation was made even more difficult by his struggles to generate temperature in the full wet tyres. This was one of the key factors that led to his early elimination, which will now force him to attempt a big recovery drive on Sunday to try to score at least some points in the battle for second place in the Constructors’ Championship.
“The first set of tyres didn’t work for us. I struggled to generate heat and get them up to temperature. The tyres were frozen,” Lewis Hamilton told Sky Sports at the end of the qualifying session for the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
“And it’s a real shame, because the guys did an amazing job and it really felt like we had competitive pace. I just wasn’t able to put together the lap I needed.”
On his final attempt, which was effectively aborted due to a yellow flag at Turn 10 (after Oliver Bearman went into the barriers in the escape road), Hamilton was unable to set the time he needed — and probably would have been enough — to progress into Q2: “On the last lap there was no timing mistake. I got a yellow flag in Turn 10 and that’s why I wasn’t able to complete my final lap.” – the British driver pointed out.
There is also an additional twist to Lewis Hamilton’s elimination. After completing that last lap, he lifted off the throttle, convinced he had taken the chequered flag (indeed, from the onboard camera, a flag and red lights were visible).
His race engineer, Riccardo Adami, urged him to continue, because in reality Lewis had not taken the chequered flag and could still have completed another lap, having crossed the line in time. Over the radio, the former Mercedes driver explained to his engineer that he slowed down because he believed he had reached the end of the session.
Looking at race control’s data, the first driver to actually take the chequered flag was Gabriel Bortoleto. The Brazilian was directly behind Lewis Hamilton, which shows that the Ferrari driver would still have had another lap available to try to qualify.
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