Lewis Hamilton pulls back the curtain on his mediocre qualifying record: "For some reason, they don’t like the way that I drive on a single lap"

Lewis Hamilton has pulled back the curtain on his struggles in qualifying and feels that a part of it has to do with the tires demanding a different driving style. The Mercedes driver has struggled quite a lot in qualifying this season, and even last year he admitted that single-lap pace has not been his strength for some time.

This season, it's been worse for Lewis Hamilton, as teammate George Russell, more or less, has had the edge over him in qualifying. Even in the last race in Silverstone, where the 39-year-old won, Russell outqualified his teammate by almost 2 tenths.

In Hungary as well, it was only the third time Lewis Hamilton out-qualified George Russell this season. The driver was questioned on his views on why qualifying had been such a struggle for him, and he revealed that it had to do with the tires not being compatible with his driving style.

Lewis Hamilton explained how his driving style was more focused on late braking and turning, but with these tires, you have to do the opposite. Talking to the media, including Sportskeeda, he said,

“It’s just with these tyres. For some reason, they don’t like the way that I drive on a single lap. I’ve sucked in qualifying for quite a while and I’m still working on it to try and improve. At some stage it will come, I’ve just got to keep working on it. I would say in my career, I’ve never really had massive problems adapting to tyres. But I’m not sure it’s necessarily tyres, I think it’s the type of car."

He added,

“The car is very… It’s more on a knife-edge than ever and it doesn’t like it when you brake late and deep and make a corner a V. You have to brake early and roll the speed in and I hate that. That’s just not me. It’s not my kind of way of driving the car. I find that really frustrating.”

Lewis Hamilton doesn't think the car had the pace to challenge the frontrunners

Lewis Hamilton will start the race in a P5, and the driver was pipped for a slot by Carlos Sainz in his Ferrari. Talking about the potential of the car as the session was quite chaotic, Lewis didn't think he could have challenged the top 3 drivers as they were just too quick. The driver did feel that maybe a P4 could have been possible with better timing. He said,

“I think we could have maybe gone a tenth or two quicker if we’d gone out later for example. The track is continuously ramping up, but we definitely couldn’t have done what the guys up ahead have done.”

While Hamilton will start the race on Sunday in P5, his teammate George Russell had a horror run as the Mercedes driver would start his race outside of the top 15 after getting eliminated in Q1.