It’s a race for second place, but that’s been the case all season. And Lewis Hamilton admitted on Saturday that he can’t wait for it to be over.
The Briton qualified in a dismal 11th place for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, with £8 million hinging on whether his Mercedes team can overcome the problems of a discouraging season by beating Ferrari into second place in the Constructors’ Championship .
The Silver Arrows lead the Italians by four points, with only 58 rounds of this marathon campaign remaining on Sunday. But it should be noted that they are more than 430 points behind Red Bull, ahead of whom Max Verstappen claimed his usual pole position.
Whoever finishes second, Mercedes’ season can hardly be classified as progress. Last season they won one race and they haven’t won this one yet (so far!). Last year they finished in third place, but ‘only’ 244 points back.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc is best placed to score heavily tomorrow evening local time after qualifying second. His Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz was a misjudged and traffic-clogged 16th, but can still make up ground and score heavily, such is the inherent pace of the red cars.
Max Verstappen starts on pole during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix after an excellent qualifying
It is the twelfth pole for the three-time world champion in a remarkable 2023 season
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc will join him on the front row after a fast time at the end of Q3
As for Mercedes, George Russell was fourth. The 25-year-old, who has generally outperformed Hamilton this year, was the most assured of the pair during practice and qualifying.
“It’s just a very unpredictable car and it’s been that way all year,” complained Hamilton, who has claimed one podium finish in the past five races and admitted he had been “off all weekend.” He continued, “I’m definitely glad it’s almost over.
“It’s more inconsistent than ever before. It’s up and down from the moment you brake, the moment you turn, the moment you hit the apex. It is very unbalanced and difficult to predict what will happen next.’
That verdict comes at the end of a year of false dawn for Mercedes. One wonders if they are closing in on the essential ingredients of the ground effect era twenty months after the current regulations came into effect – a fallow period in which a technical director has gone sideways and then left altogether; a failure marked by stubbornness in clinging to an original design that was flawed for longer than could be explained.
Now they have to scrap the difference between £105 million in prize money for second place and £96 million for third place. This will have consequences for employee bonuses – which are determined by the position of the manufacturers – and, to a lesser extent, perhaps also for optimism about the future.
Others, like McLaren, are coming out stronger. Their Oscar Piastri was the third fastest yesterday. And his teammate Lando Norris, fifth, would probably have beaten him had he not made his final qualifying mistake. “On Saturdays I do as*** work,” the Brit admitted.
Oscar Piastri (right) comes in third behind Leclerc (left) and Verstappen (middle)
However, it was a disaster for Lewis Hamilton, with the Briton finishing 11th in the second session
Returning to Mercedes, Damon Hill, the 1996 world champion, hopes that the serial winners can rediscover the big road, but he knows there are no certainties.
“I have a gut feeling that there is a bunker mentality,” he said. “When you’ve been winning for so long, you can think that what you do is always right and what everyone else does is wrong. Then you can get lost.’
Asked whether team boss Toto Wolff misses his former non-executive chairman, three-time world champion Niki Lauda, who died in 2019, Hill thought this was probably the case, saying: ‘He was a clear, hard-nosed pragmatist.
‘What does Toto know about F1 other than success? Never the doldrums.”
Not so far, no matter how Mercedes’ private duel with Ferrari ends.
Carlos Sainz also had a poor performance when he crashed during the first qualifying session
Verstappen’s teammate, Sergio Perez, could only finish ninth after a lap time was deleted
