Lewis Hamilton admitted that he had made the wrong set-up choices overnight heading into today's qualifying session for the Singapore Grand Prix at Marina Bay Street Circuit.
Mercedes has been looking strong all weekend, and Hamilton was fifth fastest ahead of team mate George Russell in first practice on Friday.
But as Russell made further progress in the ensuing session, Hamilton struggled to keep up: he was fifth again in FP2 before dropping to sixth in Saturday's final session.
While Russell continued to pressure Carlos Sainz for the top spot in qualifying, Hamilton was only eighth in Q2. He was last to run in the final round, but while Russell came within 0.072s of pole, Hamilton was half a second behind in P5.
“It is the hardest car that I’ve ever driven to get right,” Hamilton told the media after the end of the session, adding that he had "“made a set-up change last night and it didn’t work".
"The car was good yesterday on the long run but I changed the car overnight and now I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow with the car," he admitted.
"The car was feeling incredible yesterday and we had hoped that with some tweaks, we'd be able to challenge the Ferraris. We made some pretty big changes overnight, and it just came away from me again. We didn't have the speed today.
"It's obviously disappointing, especially because we clearly had a great package here and George was able to get on the front row."
"Lewis wasn't as happy with the car through the sessions," explained Mercedes' trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin, who said that it meant Hamilton had been "struggling to get the tyres to switch on".
"Some of that was when the outlaps were compromised with traffic, but even on the final run he didn't feel that the grip was there," Shovlin added.
Although Hamilton was disappointed not to be higher up the grid, he was delighted to see Russell split the Ferraris to start on the front row tomorrow alongside Sainz.
“I’m really happy for George,” Hamilton insisted. “I think he did a mega job. He’s just been connected with the car all weekend.
"I hope George gets a great start tomorrow and puts some pressure on Ferraris; it would be great for him to get the win.
“I think George has a really good shot at potentially winning,” he added. “I really hope that he does.
"On my side, I will be pushing to the maximum to go forward and see how the race unfolds in front," he said. "For me it’s just I’ll see what I can do. If I can get further up, then great.
"Tomorrow is a new day, and there is a lot to fight for."
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