27/07/2024
NEWS STORY
Lewis Hamilton will line up P3 with George Russell P6 for Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix. In a qualifying session made more challenging by wet weather, the duo set the fourth and seventh quickest times respectively.
By virtue of Max Verstappen's 10-place penalty however, they will be promoted one position on tomorrow's grid. Rain was present throughout Saturday, with FP3 greatly affected by the inclement weather. George and Lewis only completing five laps between the pair of them.
Light rain persisted throughout qualifying and, after progressing to Q3, both drivers each only had one new set of the Intermediate compound available. With forecast rain closing in, the team opted to take this new tyre at the start of the session. Whilst that heavier rain did not materialise until after the flag had fallen, Lewis was able to secure P4, P3 for tomorrow, ahead of the McLarens, with George P7, and therefore P6 for Sunday.
Dry conditions are expected for tomorrow's race, the final Grand Prix before the summer break.
Lewis Hamilton: Overall, qualifying was a good session for us. We tried to predict the weather as best we could, which is a real challenge around here. In hindsight, we would have chosen to run a little later on our new set of Intermediates in Q3, but the conditions and incoming rain are so hard to forecast. Our pace was still decent on tyres that we had completed multiple push laps on so we can be pleased with our efforts today.
Tomorrow's race will be a challenge. We've likely got a few quicker cars starting behind us in Verstappen and the McLarens. I will be getting my head down though, trying to hold position to them and see if I can keep up with the guys ahead of me. I will be giving it everything and hopefully the changes we've made overnight will help us find more pace in the dry than we had on Friday.
George Russell: George Russell Predicting the ever-changing weather made qualifying a real challenge today. You had to make sure you had the new Intermediate tyre on your car at the right time, and that was difficult to do. We were maybe slightly too early putting it on in Q3, but it is easy to say that with the benefit of hindsight. Starting P6 for tomorrow is therefore a fair result.
There will be a lot of unknowns going into tomorrow. The forecast is currently dry, and we will be hoping to move forward from P6. The McLarens looked fast on Friday and may be slightly quicker than us, but let's wait and see. Tyre degradation will also play a big factor. It was some of the highest levels we have seen so far this year in FP1 and FP2. Today's rain may also have an impact on the surface so we will have to be adaptable.
Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO: Today was a typical day at Spa; changeable conditions, with the forecast shifting constantly. That made it a real challenge. We also made changes to the car overnight but weren't able to evaluate them in FP3 given the lack of running. Nevertheless, both drivers were competitive in qualifying. In Q3, we expected heavier rain to arrive and decided to use our final set of new Intermediates at the start of the segment. Conditions didn't particularly deteriorate however and being just one tenth from starting P1 tomorrow, having set our time on tyres that had done multiple laps, is a little frustrating. That is all part of the challenge of Spa though and overall, we can be pleased with our efforts.
Tomorrow is forecast to be dry. We saw on Friday that tyre degradation may play a large role in the race. The changes we've made overnight will hopefully help us manage this better and we can be in the fight for the podium once again.
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director: We weren't happy with the balance or pace of the car yesterday, so we made some fairly major changes to the mechanical and aero specification of the car overnight. We'd hoped for a dry window in FP3 to evaluate those, but unfortunately it stayed wet throughout and there was no chance to accumulate any meaningful running.
Wet qualifying sessions are difficult at present as the grid is tight. You need to time your new sets to coincide with when the track is at its quickest. By Q3, we were down to one new set of Intermediates. We'd decided to carry more fuel and do multiple laps to try and land one with the driest conditions. That was similar to McLaren. We lost out to the Ferrari of Leclerc though who used his new set right at the end. Had we not been carrying the fuel, we would have had the pace for P2.
We don't know where we will stack up on race pace, as the car is quite different to the one we ran in the dry yesterday. Starting from P3 and P6 though, we are hopefully well placed to fight for a podium.
Check out our Saturday gallery from Spa here.