"We need to be better with our timing" - Lewis Hamilton blames Mercedes for qualifying debacle

Lewis Hamilton has squarely placed the blame on Mercedes for the qualifying debacle at the 2023 Miami GP. The Mercedes driver was eliminated in Q2 and will start the race in P13. That happened as Hamilton was the last driver in the group lined up to set his flying lap.

While everyone in front of him got their tyres up to temperature, Hamilton wasn't and was unable to put together a better lap time. As a result, the Mercedes driver was knocked out in Q2 while his teammate George Russell made it through to Q3.

Talking about what happened in qualifying, Lewis Hamilton placed the blame on the team for sending him out last in a group of cars that led to him losing significant tyre temperature. Hamilton told Sky Sports F1:

"When you're fast you can be more sat back, more relaxed, you can go at the last minute and take your time. You know you're likely to make it easily into Q3. We knew it was very hard and there was a 50:50 chance we could get into Q3 so we need to be better with our timing. It's done, I'll try and get my head down [on Sunday] and see what I can do - 13th to God knows where. It was a difficult session. We're not that quick so we really needed perfect laps but it was difficult to get into a rhythm, at the beginning I had that issue with the car going slow in the last corner."

He added:

"It was a couple of decent moments in there where I thought the car was good - the Q1 end of the run time was not too bad. We were at the back end of the top 10 of course and the last run I was the last of the pack and trying to get the temperatures into the tyres. I was at the back of the queue and everyone slowed into the last corner and I lost all temperatures and couldn't do the lap."

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Lewis Hamilton needs to apportion some blame on himself

While Lewis Hamilton could continue to place the blame on the team, somewhere he needs to realise as well that his teammate George Russell was able to make it work. There was laptime on the table that Hamilton was unable to exploit, and that should be one of the bigger takeaways from the session.

Mercedes were arguably on the backfoot during qualifying, but there was more time on the table that Lewis Hamilton was unable to find. The driver will start the race in P13, so it will be interesting to see how he fares.