Lewis Hamilton: We lost a lot on the straights

Lewis Hamilton will start from the third row after qualifying at Suzuka and the seven-time world champion hopes he will have the chance to fight for higher positions in the race.

Lewis Hamilton (6th): “We lost quite a bit of time on the straights, although the car kept up well with the rest of the circle. It was fun to drive and I managed to get good laps overall, but only on the straights we lost about five or six tenths.

But actually we were ready for this, because the rear wing of the Mercedes is bigger than rival cars.

The developments in tomorrow’s race will depend on the weather. If it rains, we looked good under such conditions yesterday. In any case, you can expect us to get closer to the leaders than today and I just hope the results on Sunday will be better than in today’s qualifying.

Although one cannot count on the victory, because the front runners are nine tenths faster than us. If you lose that much in qualifying, it’s unlikely you can win the race.”

George Russell (8th): “The eighth result is not what we expected during qualifying at this track. We didn’t expect to really fight Red Bull and Ferrari, but we lost too many of them and in reality we battled with Alpine today.

We know our car has too much drag, so we lose on tracks like Suzuka, where you need a lot of downforce, but on straights it’s slippery. With all this we try to figure out in the course of preparation for next year, but everything takes time.

Talking about the upcoming race, I think we’ll be able to get a faster pace in the distance from the Grand Prix than we are today. In the third practice we did well on long series of circles, but I’m not sure if this pace will be enough to compete with the machines of the two top teams tomorrow.