10/06/2018
NEWS STORY
From pre-season testing, through Monaco and right up to yesterday morning, Mercedes have steadfastly avoided using the hypersoft tyre introduced by Pirelli this season.
Traditionally unable to generate sufficient heat into the softest compounds as quickly as its rivals, particularly Ferrari, yesterday saw Mercedes, and particularly Lewis Hamilton, pay the price, as Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen claimed first and third on the grid for today's Canadian Grand Prix.
Having avoided the pink-banded tyres like Superman would avoid Kryptonite, Hamilton now rues the policy.
"I think when we look back on this weekend we will accept the fact that, yeah, in hindsight, it would have been nice if we had more time to prepare on the hyper-soft, but it wasn't the case," he told reporters.
"From the testing we had in Abu Dhabi particularly, that's what led us to the decisions we made, and we stick with those. We did the best we could with it.
"I think it was just a combination of things," he admitted. "When we got to qualifying, honestly we knew it was going to be very close as it was, but in my heart, I truly feel like we had the pace to lock out the front row, or at least I had the pace to be on the front row. But I just struggled in the session and wasn't able to pull it through. You can't win them all, and I'll try to recover from it tomorrow.
"Yesterday the car balance was great into Turn Ten," he continued, "and usually the last sector is my strongest at this track, but I was just struggling with massive bumps into Turn Ten. Today I think we had a couple of small lock ups, but as you continue to push the setup there are areas that can be affected. Constantly today going into that corner I was struggling to get the car stopped, be it front locking or rear locking, so it was quite messy.
"I need to look into it to see exactly what it is, but there was a good chunk of time there, definitely in that corner alone there was pole position for sure if I'd figured out how to fix it.
"I'm hoping tomorrow that we are still in a good position and our long runs yesterday were really good. It will be interesting to see how the Red Bull does as well and hopefully we can push and apply the pressure."