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Toto Wolff thinks that Lewis Hamilton's Monaco Grand Prix is all about damage limitation, as the Brit will start from the midfield. Hamilton is used to starting from the first or second row, but today, the three-time world champion will line up P13 for today's race.
Yesterday in qualifying, Hamilton was struggling with his car. In the earlier stages of the session, he was heard complaining that there was no grip and almost crashed at the top of the hill at the start of Q2.
However, he never made it into Q3 after the car failed to set a competitive lap early. Hamilton left it to the dying embers of the session, which proved costly as Stoffel Vandoorne crashed which brought out a yellow flag and meant Hamilton could not improve on his time.
"There were two very different qualifying results for Lewis and Valtteri [Bottas]," said Wolff, with Valtteri Bottas taking third for the team, behind both Ferraris. "With Lewis, you could see even from the TV pictures that he was struggling with the car and nearly lost it a couple of times in qualifying.
"We don't know at the moment what went wrong. We took a false turn with the set-up on Thursday and, since then, although we tried to retrace our steps, we never got it back on track for him.
"He was unfortunate with the yellow flag for Vandoorne in Q2, as he was on course to make it through the session, but the car never felt good for him after FP1 and that made it tough to put together the laps. The race will clearly be a case of damage limitation for him and trying to maximise his points score, but he will fight to the last lap."
With overtaking notably difficult around Monaco, Ferrari is favourites for this one and could take their first victory around Monte Carlo since 2001. However, Wolff doesn't believe that Mercedes are out of the battle yet.
"The result he achieved didn't look possible for much of the session, but he really pulled out a fantastic lap on the final run in Q3 and came just a few thousandths shy of a place on the front row," he said. "Ferrari is clearly in the driving seat for [the race] but we will be in the hunt, too."
Fergal Walsh
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