"It's going to be a long afternoon": Lewis Hamilton not too optimistic ahead of 2023 F1 Brazilian GP

Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton predicts a "long afternoon" for the main race on Sunday at Interlagos after he is left disappointed with the performance of his car in the Sprint Race on Saturday.

The seven-time world champion started the Sprint Shootout from P5, just behind his teammate George Russell, and had a decent getaway from the line as he overtook Sergio Perez in the opening laps of the Sprint. The two drivers had a pretty good battle amongst themselves but it was the Mexican who came out on top and regained the P4 position.

The pain, however, for Hamilton was far from over as he lost positions to Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda, and barely secured his P7 grid position from Carlos Sainz and Daniel Ricciardo. Speaking with Sky Sports, Lewis Hamilton said:

"It was horrible. It was not enjoyable whatsoever. I had a good start and then after that, just struggled with the balance. A lot of understeer, then snap oversteer, and I was just fighting the car from very early on. Then I had no tires in the end. I don't really know how I'm going to fix that for tomorrow."

"It's going to be a long afternoon, that's for sure. I can only assume I've got the set-up wrong. It is what it is. I'll fight as hard as I can tomorrow, but we won't be winning. That's for sure. I'll just be trying to see if I can manage the tires better tomorrow," he added.

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Mercedes F1 engineer agrees with Lewis Hamilton's assessment of the race

Mercedes Technical Director Andrew Shovlin shared similar thoughts regarding the performance of the car as Lewis Hamilton.

As per F1.com, Shovlin said:

"That was not a good race for us today. We likely pushed a bit too hard early on and it took a few laps to realize that we simply didn't have the pace to race for a top three position."

"That hurt the tires and caused us to suffer from high levels of tire degradation in the closing stages. It might be a little cooler tomorrow and that could help; not so much that the tires will be in a drastically different operating window though," Shovlin added.

It will be fascinating to see if Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, along with the team, can find any gains between the Sprint and the main race which will bode well for them on Sunday.