The explanation of Hamilton's disastrous session

In the space of two weeks, Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) experienced two radically different qualifying sessions. To heroic pole position in front of his fans in Great Britain followed by the disastrous exit at the end of Q1 due to a mechanical problem.

Then author of the fifth time, the outgoing champion veered wide at the first turn, a very fast curve which had already sent him out of the limits of the track earlier. Returning to the circuit, Lewis Hamilton quickly realized that his car was no longer running smoothly.

His gearbox seemed to be stuck in fourth gear. On the radio, his engineer announced to him thatloss of hydraulics had appeared and the car had to be stopped. We then saw Lewis Hamilton jogging for a few dozen meters, like in Canada in 2010, already during qualifying (but after running out of fuel).

Unable to return the car to the garage before the start of Q2, the one who signed a new two-year contract with Mercedes spent a long time crouched against his machine. Time to catch your breath but probably also to calm your rage losing ground on Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari, on pole) for the race.

"I'm going to do everything to see how far I can go back, but it won't be like Silverstone », he announces. During the previous round, the Englishman finished second after being hit by Kimi Räikkönen during the first braking.

According to Toto wolff, the boss of Mercedes, the hydraulic loss would be caused by the poor trajectory of his driver at the first corner. “ The car jumped on the curb and this appeared to cause a hydraulic leak, but we need to investigate if this is actually the case.", explained the main team to Sky Sports F1.

The main person concerned believes for his part that this mechanical problem is at the origin of this piloting error. “There was a loss of hydraulics before the exit. » At the end of the afternoon, Mercedes confirmed Lewis Hamilton's statements. Hydraulic pressure dropped midway through Turn 1, causing the driver to lose power steering before hitting the curbs. “The car jumping on the curb is the consequence rather than the cause” confirms the team's Tweet:

UPDATE: @LewisHamilton had a hydraulic failure at Turn 1 as he ran the normal curb through that corner. Then, with failed power steering, as a result of the hydraulic failure, his car jumped over the run-off… 1/2 #GermanGP pic.twitter.com/1BlkgsLyvc

- Mercedes-AMG F1 (@ MercedesAMGF1) July 21, 2018

Lewis Hamilton will start in the best case scenario in 14th place on Sunday at 15:10 p.m. for the German GP, ​​unless he decides to replace mechanical elements on his Mercedes.