Lewis Hamilton: British GP pole chance slipped away at Vale
SILVERSTONE, England — Lewis Hamilton said any chance of securing pole position at the British Grand Prix slipped away in Silverstone’s Vale corner when his Ferrari understeered wide.
The seven-time champion will start fifth on the grid at his home race on Sunday after missing out on the fastest time in qualifying by 0.203 seconds to Max Verstappen on pole position.
Hamilton looked in contention for his first pole position with Ferrari until the final sector of the lap where he lost time to the four cars that qualified ahead of him.
“I just had understeer at Turn 16,” Hamilton said after the session. “That lost me the time that I had. It probably cost me at least second [place].”
Hamilton said understeer is a common trait of the Ferrari in slow-speed corners, and one that becomes even more apparent when he pushes the car to the limit in qualifying.
“I think at the end we’ve got low speed understeer, which is something that’s inherent with this car,” he added. “I think we’re overdriving to get that extra bit of time.
“On actual pure pace I don’t think the car is as quick as the car is today. So we’re probably having to go a little bit too far over, which is where the car’s super peaky.
“So we need a little bit more performance.”
However, Hamilton said he had made progress with the Ferrari at recent races, pointing to a floor upgrade at last weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix as one of the reasons.
“We are making progress. There’s still more to make, but we obviously had the upgrade in the last race.
“We are improving our process, the way we go about our weekends. I definitely feel like we’re punching out better results. So we’ve got to keep pushing.
“I’m pleased with the progress. I’m really pleased with the direction. My engineer [Ricardo Adami] and I have been really gelling a lot better in terms of how we set the car up I was much happier in the car.
“The lap was really, really nice. Up until the last corner, there was a bit of understeer. It was the curb that put me a little wide, but then I just lost it.”
Source: espn.com