Hamilton bewildered by same old Saturday drop-off

It was business as usual for Lewis Hamilton on Saturday, and not in the way that he or Mercedes had been hoping for as their promising Friday pace once again deserted them on Saturday.

Hamilton was in the top two in both of the first two practice sessions, and finished the day just 0.066s behind Ferrari's Charles Leclerc in the final timings for the day, suggesting he was in the running for the front row.

But in final practice he dropped to P10, and in qualifying he ended up almost a full second off the Ferrari's pace. It means he will start from a disappointing seventh on the grid for tomorrow's Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

It's a sadly familiar story for Hamilton, with the team convinced that it has found a cure for its recent problems only to be slapped in the face by reality when it comes to qualifying and the race.

"Every Saturday, it's the same, so I'm not really surprised," Hamilton told the media in the paddock in Baku after qualifying. "FP1 and FP2, the car felt amazing and I was really on it. I think it could have been at least second row.

• Read also: Leclerc wins fourth straight Baku pole as Norris misses first cut

"Literally from lap one, [we could] compete at the front," he continued. "[So you have to] wonder when you get to Saturday whether the others were heavier in FP1 and FP2.

"It felt great yesterday. Then as soon as we started today, I barely changed anything to the car because I didn't want to mess anything up - and the tyres wouldn't work! All day they've not worked.

"I was struggling to get the tyres working and that is what it is all about. The last lap - like the last sector - the tyres just started to work, but we missed it. Hopefully we can have a better day tomorrow than we had today.

"We will analyse why that was as a team and hopefully make improvements," he noted. "The aim is to move forward tomorrow, and I am staying positive that we can do so.

"It is not always easy to progress here, but we have a slightly different tyre strategy to others which may help us. We will also have to look after the tyres as it is easy to suffer with the rears."

George Russell was almost half a second quicker than Hamilton and will start from fifth on the grid, after having been summoned to see the stewards to discuss a yellow flag infringement during qualifying.

It took place ten minutes into Q1 when Carlos Sainz went into the runoff at turn 2. Russell was the next car on track and was fully committed to his braking, already turning into the corner when the yellow flag was shown.

The stewards concluded there was no reasonable way for Russell to have seen that flag, and even if he had, he could not have changed his braking. For that reason they decided against a penalty but nonetheless opted to reprimand Russell to emphasis the serious nature of yellow flag infringements even with mitigation.

That outcome means Russell's P5 grid position tomorrow is unchanged, much to his relief."I was pretty happy with my laps in qualifying," he reported. "They all felt strong.

"Unfortunately, we didn't quite have the pace to fight for pole position," he lamented. "We topped the times in FP3, but we knew that this flattered us a little bit, having run right at the very end of the session.

"We thought we would be in a battle just outside of the top three. It is therefore a little frustrating to be half-a-tenth from P3, but P5 isn't a bad place to start from.

"Ferrari are typically quick at street circuits and that proved to be the case once again today. I don't think we will be able to race them for victory tomorrow, but hopefully we are in the battle for the podium."

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