A dejected Lewis Hamilton bemoans poor qualifying session: "The car has just been difficult"

Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton mentioned that it was a poor qualifying session for him and pointed out that the W14 was 'difficult' to handle in the changeable conditions in Zandvoort on Saturday.

The seven-time world champion was impeded several times by other drivers in his final run of Q2, which proved to be a roadblock to him getting a clean run and bowing out of the session in P13.

Although Hamilton will start from a higher position due to penalties applied to Yuki Tsunoda for impeding qualifying, that would be little respite for him.

Speaking to the media, including Sportskeeda, Lewis Hamilton said in his post-race interview:

“The car has just been difficult, so I’ll try and turn the negative from today into a positive. The car didn’t feel too great after P2. It felt great in P1 and I’ve just not had that feeling ever since, so I’m not really sure what it is.”

He continued:

“A few of the others that were in the way stopped the previous laps, but Tsunoda? He was in the way a little bit but it didn’t lose me any time. It wasn’t difficult to judge [how to run the session]. Obviously a lot of people were in the way, but generally we were just slow out there.”

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Lewis Hamilton analyzes his disappointing qualifying in Zandvoort

Lewis Hamilton accepted that till now it hadn't been his weekend in the Netherlands thus far, as he stated that he had been losing confidence since FP1.

Speaking with F1.com, the Mercedes driver said:

“It wasn’t my day today. Since FP1, I’ve lost some confidence in the car, and that made qualifying tricky. It was tough to get the tires into the working window, I struggled with the balance and overall grip, and George also did a few different settings that seemed to work better. But we know that the car operates in a narrow window, and these things can happen when you are in that situation."

He added:

"On the final run, I did two consecutive laps, and the tires overheated on the second one, so I couldn’t improve the time. Tomorrow is a new challenge; hopefully, the car will be a bit better on full tanks, and we can make some forward progress. This isn’t an easy circuit for doing that – but that will be the goal.”

It will be interesting to see where Lewis Hamilton finishes at the end of the race, as the chances of him standing on the podium are slim.