With a storm blowing throughout the Interlagos circuit for the Q3 phase of qualifying, groups knew that getting out on monitor early sufficient earlier than the rain began was essential to safe an excellent grid slot.
However though Lewis Hamilton and George Russell had been third and fourth within the queue on the finish of the pitlane for the beginning of Q3, behind the 2 Aston Martins, they subsequently didn’t profit from the chance to get their tyres into the appropriate working window.
As Aston Martin duo Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll pushed exhausting to get warmth into their rubber on their out-laps, Hamilton and Russell took a extra cautious method.
Russell was even overtaken by eventual pole place man Max Verstappen on his method out of the pits, with the world champion figuring out he wanted to assault on the out-lap.
As Hamilton and Russell ended up fifth and sixth on the grid, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff mentioned Mercedes ought to have been extra adaptive contemplating how circumstances had been dramatically altering.
“You see how marginal the variations are when it comes to out-laps and temperatures, and I feel we weren’t adaptive sufficient,” Wolff informed Sky Sports activities F1.
Photograph by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes-AMG, with Toto Wolff, Crew Principal and CEO, Mercedes-AMG
“The Aston Martins simply stormed away. Max, straight out of the storage with heat tyres, additionally stormed away and so they had been the quickest vehicles.
“We had been one second off of the earlier time, or eight tenths off the quickest time, and it exhibits you what we should always have performed.”
Wolff felt that, amid the combined circumstances that had been thrown up in Q3, any spot on the grid between P1 and P8 was doable.