The China Mail - Hamilton, Leclerc bemoan tough start to Austrian Grand Prix weekend

Hamilton qualified a disappointing sixth for Saturday's sprint grid, with Leclerc only 10th behind Max Verstappen's Red Bull pole-sitter.

"I wasn't in the mix at all, the whole session was pretty disastrous from our point of view," said Hamilton, who went wide and off on his first flying lap in SQ1.

"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."

His team-mate George Russell qualified fourth.

Russell said he felt capable of challenging and believed Mercedes form endorsed a view that they are on the way back to becoming a more competitive force again.

A luckless Leclerc was mystified by his and Ferrari’s latest flop.

The Monegasque, who claimed an emotional home win at last month's Monaco Grand Prix, was classified 10th after failing to clock a lap due to a car problem as he exited the pit lane.

His Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz, who is leaving the team this year to be replaced by Hamilton was fifth.

"I don’t know what happened," said Leclerc, whose` Ferrari career has often been blighted by team errors or poor judgement.

"I was in the pitlane and then the anti-stall switched off.

"The team told me we would speak when I am back in the garage, but I came straight here and so I don’t know.”

As the cars began to leave the pitlane for their final flying laps to decide pole position, Leclerc pulled up to the side of the road to allow his rivals to pass.

He rejoined the action, but it was too late to allow him to complete a warm-up lap and cross the start-finish line before the chequered flag.

- 'Disappointing' -

As a result, he did not clock a flying lap time.

"We weren't looking super-strong, but definitely better than P10," he added.

"So it is a bit disappointing. We have to see what happened and try to have a strong sprint race and come back to the front."

After winning in Monaco with Sainz third behind him, Leclerc and Ferrari suffered a double DNF (Did Not Finish) in Canada, where both drivers failed to make the top-ten shootout in qualifying, and then finished fifth and sixth in Spain last Sunday.

He arrived in Austria with some confidence in having a chance to repeat his 2022 victory, but appeared to be suffering from the Italian team’s ongoing inconsistency.

"In Montreal, we identified quite well what was going wrong and it was more down to the tyres," said Leclerc. "But in Barcelona, we were lacking just raw pace and we were slower than we expected. I don’t think we optimised our package.

"So we’ll keep on working, try to optimise also the new package that we have on the car, which obviously was out for the first race in Barcelona.

"And we still have some work to try to understand a bit more these new parts that we are using now. However, I don't think that the issues we have are the same and we don’t have a trend."

V.Fan--ThChM