SUZUKA, Japan — Lewis Hamilton took responsibility for his poor qualifying performance at the Japanese Grand Prix, stating his P8 start was `not good enough`.
The seven-time world champion will start from eighth place at Suzuka on Sunday after being 0.311 seconds slower than his Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc, who qualified fourth.
`P8 is not great, it`s clearly not good enough from my perspective,` Hamilton told Sky Sports. `However, I was pleased to reach Q3, it was a very close competition, but I didn`t manage to put together strong laps in Q3.`
During Q2, Hamilton was held up by Carlos Sainz approaching Turn 1, which forced the Ferrari driver off the track. Sainz received a three-place grid penalty and will start from 15th.
Hamilton has had varied results in his initial races with Ferrari, including a win in the China sprint race but a disqualification from the main grand prix the next day.
His Ferrari was disqualified after excessive wear was found on the plank under the car, caused by running the car too low.
Despite the plank wear being just 0.5mm over the limit, Hamilton confirmed they are running the car higher in Japan, sacrificing some performance to avoid a repeat incident.
`We are running higher than we would prefer, but everyone is facing similar constraints,` Hamilton mentioned.
`Especially after the previous race, we are running a bit higher than we want to be. Charles performed incredibly well today.`
`We explored different setup directions, and I experienced significant understeer that we couldn`t resolve during qualifying.`
Hamilton hopes for rain during Sunday’s race to improve his chances of moving up the grid.
`I am excited, I generally enjoy racing in the rain. It will be challenging, but when you have a qualifying session like mine, you hope for rain.`
