Lewis Hamilton laments 'disastrous' Austria Sprint qualifying

Lewis Hamilton will start the Austria Sprint from sixth on the grid (Photo: Getty)

Sir Lewis Hamilton admits he drove some ‘very bad laps’ as he qualified sixth for the Austrian Grand Prix Sprint race.

After picking up his first podium of the season last weekend in Spain, Hamilton was disappointed to find himself a little off the pace on Friday at the Red Bull Ring.

The Mercedes driver would recover from scraping through Q1 but could only finish sixth fastest, half-a-second slow than polesitter Max Verstappen.

The Red Bull star was just 0.093 seconds faster than Lando Norris, with Oscar Pistari third, the other Mercedes of George Russell fourth and Carlos Sainz fifth.

Speaking afterward, a despondent Hamilton said: ‘I wasn’t in the mix at all, the whole session was pretty disastrous from our point.

‘Practice was good, the car felt good, I don’t think we had the pace to be on pole, but very bad laps. I don’t think overtaking is mega here, but we’ll give our best.

‘It’s usually not such an eventful race, so I think the focus will be mostly on getting a better qualifying tomorrow.’

Max Verstappen is being roared on by Red Bull’s home fans (Photo: Getty)

As the seven-time champion mentions this was just qualifying for the shorter Sprint race on Saturday, which will be followed by qualifying for the main grand prix which will get underway on Sunday at 2pm UK time.

While the McLarens of Norris and Pistari have been getting closer to Red Bull over the past few weeks, Verstappen remains the quickest and will be looking to extend his 69 point championship lead at his team’s home race.

‘It’s great to be first here in front of, basically, my home fans and my home Grand Prix. It’s been a good day so far,’ the three-time champion said.

‘It’s really been nice to drive the car. It was well balanced and then you make some little adjustments going into sprint qualifying and everything has been working really well.

‘It’s a good start to the weekend, there are still a lot of things to do, but I’m happy with today.’

It hasn’t been all plain sailing for the Dutchman however, after his father Jos reignited his feud with Red Bull boss Christian Horner.

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