Hamilton to start 14th after car breakdown during qualifying
Thursday 6 December 2018 15:04, UK
Lewis Hamilton insists he does not feel alarmed by Mercedes' latest technical failure and says he will channel the power of positive thinking at the German GP.
The world champion will start Sunday's race at Hockenheim from 14th place - 13 spots behind pole-sitting title rival Sebastian Vettel - after a hydraulics fault at the end of Q1 triggered a power steering failure and meant he had to stop his car on track.
Vettel on pole, Hamilton on his knees
The technical problem comes two races after Mercedes suffered race-ending failures on both their cars in Austria and amid a fierce championship battle with Ferrari, who lead both title races.
But asked on Saturday evening if he was starting to feel 'alarmed' by recent events, Hamilton replied: "I don't find it alarming. We work through whatever issues we are faced with."
He added: "When I got back [to the garage] my first thought is we all feel the same pain in the team, and I truly mean it when I say we win and lose together. I can't control what has just happened, all I can do is try to shape and steer what is happening in the future.
"I got past it really quick, which is part of the growing process for all of us, and now I'm trying to make sure to put as much energy towards doing the best job I can [in the race]. As you see in lots of scenarios in life, good things can come if you put hard work and positive energy towards it. So that's what I'm going to try."
Hamilton explains car failure
Cutting a calm and composed figure in his Saturday evening appearance in front of the media, Hamilton sought to clarify what had happened to his car, as Mercedes also made clear the fault was not the result of driver error.
"The assumption I've seen people have made were that the horrible bumps I experienced later on were the cause of the failure, which is not the case," explained Hamilton.
"Everyone uses the exit kerb at turn one and when I got to the exit kerb the power steering failed and when that happened the steering got extremely heavy and pulled to the left.
"I thought I'd had a tyre failure or a track-rod failure or something like that, but that wasn't the case, it was the hydraulics which then forced me to take that exit road. I was carrying a lot of speed and so couldn't really slow down and took those bumps afterwards. But they didn't do anything to the car. It would be easy to assume that would have been the case, but it wasn't."
Could he have beaten Vettel to pole?
After a run of three successive Mercedes poles, Vettel took full advantage of Hamilton's unexpected demise to claim his first qualifying P1 since Canada and fifth of the season.
But Hamilton believes he would have had the pace to take his own fifth pole of 2018 - although said Ferrari's superior pace on the straights had caught Mercedes' eye.
"It did [have pole in it]," he said. "We didn't know that the Ferraris would be so fast on straights. I think Valtteri did a great job and they made a lot of time up on the straights, which their new thing.
"To make three tenths up just on the straights is impressive when you don't have a new engine."
