Mercedes detail where Lewis Hamilton’s Las Vegas win hopes unravelled

Mercedes believe an interruption to qualifying ultimately curtailed Lewis Hamilton’s hopes of winning the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Seven-time world champion Hamilton looked a strong bet for pole position after topping the first two practice sessions in Sin City but a mistake-ridden Q3 left him only 10th on the grid.

From there, Hamilton pulled off a storming comeback drive to take second place behind Mercedes teammate George Russell, before claiming afterwards he would have “breezed” to victory without his errors in qualifying.

Speaking to media including Crash.net on Friday in Qatar, Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin suggested that a delay to the start of Q3 following Franco Colapinto’s crash disrupted Hamilton’s rhythm.

“He was very happy in Q2 and very comfortable with the car,” Shovlin explained.

"I think the interruption to the program wouldn't have suited him. I think without that there's he would have certainly been on the front row and he looked like he had a good chance of being on pole.

“But the track reset, you then got this long break while they recover the car and I think he just got out of out of that rhythm a bit. Unfortunately, he didn't get two clean laps and that's what put him in P10.”

Shovlin admitted Mercedes still do not have a clear understanding of why they were so competitive in Las Vegas.

“The honest answer is we don't understand every bit of why we were fast there,” he said.

“For sure the cold conditions suit us and we often see that in the hottest conditions we slip back a bit but it's always difficult because there's inevitably an element of we move forward and others move back.

“It's hard enough to diagnose problems with your own car let alone to try and work out what others were struggling with. But it was nice that the car was working well but then if you look at the final stints of the race, Ferrari, McLaren, they were actually pretty quick.

“So, I think our early pace was very impressive, our single lap was impressive but perhaps the picture if you took the end of the race, they were certainly closer but none of our simulations had Lewis [Hamilton] able to make it from P10 to P2 so that was that was clearly a very very strong performance.”

Asked what that says about Hamilton, Shovlin replied: “That he was pretty determined to get a good result and he tried very hard to chase down George.

“But clearly George having a clear run at it from the front meant he was able to build a comfortable gap.

“But it was fantastic to see Lewis in such good form and hopefully we’ll get some more brilliant results with him before the end of the year.”