But his mastery of the circuit stood in stark contrast to a woeful showing from the Mercedes drivers, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, who ended the day with their cars in the barriers. Hamilton crashed out in Q3, taking a major impact and shortly afterwards Russell did likewise. Hamilton was disconsolate and unable to explain how he had lost the car. “I’m so sorry to the team, everyone worked so hard to put this car together and I never like to damage it or bring it back damaged. I just lost the back end in turn seven and that was that.”. Verstappen set the pace on his first hot run in Q3 with a time of 1min 5.092secs.

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