“It can’t get worse, surely. And it did. Sh*t happens,” – This is what Lewis Hamilton said after being knocked out of the first part of qualifying in China. But are the comments made by Hamilton about his qualifying mishaps legitimate? After the knockout, Hamilton explained that he had chosen to experiment with the car’s setup and went in a different direction than his teammate George Russell and it didn’t work out for him.

However, his former teammate and rival, Nico Rosberg believes that it has become a go-to excuse for the Mercedes driver every time he gets beaten by Russell. Hamilton has now been out-qualified 4 out of 5 times in 2024 by his teammate. And he finds himself P18 on the grid for the Chinese Grand Prix despite claiming an impressive second-place finish in the Sprint race. And just like in Australia and Jeddah, Hamilton came up with a similar reason for his lack of pace.

During the broadcast coverage of the qualifying session, Nico Rosberg accused Lewis Hamilton of making excuses for his poor performances. He pointed out his former teammate’s tendency to blame differences in the car setup for his struggles. “George has mostly been in front of Lewis. 4-1 now, in qualifying. Lewis tends to say ‘Yeah, but we have different set-ups and such a big car difference’. That has been his excuse, so far this year,” Rosberg commented.

“Each time he says that; George says: ‘The last time I checked, the cars are pretty similar. He has gone again, for that. So it’s interesting,” he added. He also went on to point out the mistake by Hamilton on his final flying run in Q1 where he locked up and went wide in the Turn 14 hairpin of the Shanghai International Circuit. “It was really unnecessary to push the limit so much. For a seven-time world champion, that’s a mistake which should be avoidable.”

While Rosberg may think that Lewis made an unnecessary mistake during his lap, the British driver thinks differently.

Lewis Hamilton blamed the tailwind in Turn 14 for his last-lap mistake

During the media interactions, after qualifying, Hamilton explained why he was not able to navigate the final sector of the lap perfectly in his final run in Q1. While acknowledging that it wasn’t one of his best laps around the Shanghai Circuit, he suggested that it was the tailwind coming into the hairpin that pushed that car forward a little more than he anticipated.

“I don’t blame anything on the team – I think it wasn’t one of my best qualifying laps. I just couldn’t make it around Turn 14 because there was a tailwind.” It’s only the third time in his career that Hamilton is starting from as far back as P18 on the grid, with the earlier two occurrences in 2009.

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