Lewis Hamilton rues yellow flag after doing ‘more than enough for pole’

Lewis Hamilton rued the timing of yellow flags which he felt cost him pole position for the sprint race at the F1 United States Grand Prix.

Both Mercedes drivers went out early in SQ3 to set their sole efforts of the final part of qualifying and Hamilton had been on a much faster lap than teammate George Russell.

But when Williams driver Franco Colapinto spun at Turn 12 ahead of Hamilton, the seven-time world champion had to slow down for brief yellow flags. He ended up seventh as others improved.

“Just got unlucky with the yellow flag and that’s what it is. I was four-tenths up,” Hamilton said.

Russell went on to qualify second, missing out on pole by just 0.12 seconds.

Despite the frustration of a lost pole, Hamilton was buoyed by the progress Mercedes have made with their new upgrade package which debuted in Austin.

“The good thing is the team’s made a step with the car, the upgrade has clearly worked,” he explained.

“I’m really grateful to everyone back at the factory for all the hard work over this period of time because it’s been a tough slog for everyone to get the upgrade to make sure that they’re working and so yeah it’s not the end of the day. We got another chance.”

Hamilton also praised changes his Mercedes team made to his car after suffering a high-speed spin during the only practice session.

“We did a great job to make changes to the car and it’s always a bit of a gamble because you don’t know whether or not it’s going to work, the changes that you make,” he explained.

“You hope they do what you aim to do with them and as soon as I got out the car was like night and day.”

Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin was also convinced Hamilton was on course to claim pole.

“We can take many positives but ultimately, we end the day slightly frustrated,” he said. “Lewis was on for a lap that would have been more than enough for P1.

“We had opted to go on the early side to avoid any interruptions with yellows on a busy track at the end of the session.”