Hamilton says his “every time” radio message meant “I was just s*** every time”

Lewis Hamilton was dismayed at failing to make the cut for Q3 while his team mate took pole position.

The Ferrari driver dropped out in Q2 after lapping 0.247 seconds slower than team mate Charles Leclerc. He qualified 12th on the grid after falling short of reaching the final round by just 0.015 seconds.

“I’m just useless,” said the glum driver after the session.

“It clearly is [the case],” he told the official Formula 1 channel. “I just drove terribly. It is what it is.”

He added “nothing changed” in the balance of his car.

Hamilton made it through the first round of qualifying despite losing time on his final lap when he caught a Williams driver at the apex of turn one.

After his first run in Q2 Hamilton’s race engineer Ricardo Adami told him he had lost three tenths of a second in turn 11. Hamilton improved on his final run, gaining over a quarter of a second in the final sector, but still fell short of making the cut.

“Every time, every time,” he muttered as he returned to the Ferrari garage. He told Viaplay later this meant: “I was just shit every time. I just don’t get through every time.”

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Leclerc reached Q3 and claimed Ferrari’s first pole position of the season in surprising circumstances. Both Ferrari drivers were unable to lap as quickly in qualifying as they had in practice.

Hamilton is 10-4 down against Leclerc in qualifying so far this year. He dropped out of qualifying in the first round in both sessions at Spa last weekend. In qualifying for grands prix, Hamilton has failed to reach Q3 on four occasions since his joined Ferrari.

His latest setback comes at a track where he has been especially successful in the past. Hamilton has won the Hungarian Grand Prix eight times and only started lower than 11th once, in 2014, when he suffered a fire in his car during qualifying.

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