"Never giving up is the way forward," claims Lewis Hamilton after helping secure Mercedes' season-best qualifying results at 2022 F1 Mexican GP

Despite both Mercedes cars showing incredible pace this weekend at the Mexican Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton lost out on pole position after setting the third-fastest pace in Saturday's qualifying session.

This also happens to be Hamilton's best qualifying result of the 2022 season, while Max Verstappen took pole and George Russell set the second-fastest pace to start the main race from the front row on Sunday. Early on in Q3, the seven-time world champion set a strong lap time that was eventually deleted for crossing track limits.

In a post-qualifying media interaction, Lewis Hamilton admitted that had the lap time not been deleted, he could have potentially been starting the race from the front row. He said:

“The first one (lap), which I think was quick enough for second maybe I don’t know, but it wasn’t quite good enough. The Red Bulls are naturally so fast. I think this is such an amazing showing and I’m really proud of my team. This is the best qualifying we’ve had all year, so it just shows that having perseverance and never giving up is the way forward. A big thanks to everyone here and back in the factory. I’m pretty happy with my position (on grid) to be honest, it’s a long way down to turn one.”

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Lewis Hamilton does not believe Mercedes can truly fight Red Bull or Ferrari's pace this season

After eight years of pure domination, Mercedes have had a tough season in 2022 and continue to chase their first race win of the year. Lewis Hamilton believes that the possibility of the team achieving this goal in the final three races of the season will be "unrealistic" unless something "drastic" happens to Red Bull or Ferrari.

In a post-race media interaction at the US GP last weekend, Lewis Hamilton said:

“I think we really need to be realistic. The Red Bull car has been the fastest car by far all year. And it is still the fastest car. So today, we were… you know we’re in the position we’re in through a lot of the races, through reliability. You know if Charles was there, if Perez was there, for example, it would have been a different race, because they would have been ahead of us, we would have been on the third row.”

He added:

“And so, I think today it was great to have started third and been in position to fight, but out of true pace, they’ve been ahead of us all weekend. They were today and they will be the next three races. So, unless something drastic happens to any more of them, for example, then it’s highly unlikely that we will have the true pace to be able to compete with them. But we’ll give it everything we’ve got.”

Red Bull secured the 2022 F1 constructors' championship title at the US GP last weekend, while 53 points currently separate Ferrari and Mercedes for P2 in the constructors' standings.