‘We need rain’ – Lewis Hamilton concedes Monaco F1 win chances unlikely

Lewis Hamilton conceded that Ferrari “need rain” to progress from the second row of the Formula 1 grid at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Hamilton has looked rejuvenated since the Canadian Grand Prix, and ended Friday as the fastest driver in Monaco.

But setup changes for Mercedes and Red Bull complicated the battle for pole position, with the seven-time champion falling to third on Saturday, as Kimi Antonelli and Max Verstappen locked out the front row.

But with overtaking at a premium, Hamilton was open about his chances to make progress on Sunday - even if sunny skies and not rain are forecast. 

“I mean, you know how these races go,” said Hamilton.

“It’s very, very difficult. I don’t think there’s overtaking. I hope that we can get a really good start, maybe apply some pressure to the two. And we kind of need rain, probably.

“But nothing is impossible. We can apply the pressure, but it’s going to be very hard to beat these two. We’ve got two great drivers who are in quick cars and have been very quick all weekend.

“It’s a shame this race is generally such a procession in the sense that we’re often just following each other. The car is always overheating, the brakes are always overheating, just with how the track is, and we only have one stop because the tyres are so hard and often go so far.

“I hope there’s a genius way of making this race even more fun from a driver’s perspective and from a fan perspective in future.

“I don’t know, but I’m still going to give it absolutely everything and hassle them as much as I can and try to force them into not making certain corners.”

Hamilton confused after Ferrari’s Monaco pace goes missing

After heading the order on Friday, Hamilton was left confused at how Ferrari “lost some performance overnight”, stating that the car was “in a bad place” heading into qualifying.

“You could see in Q1 that I was like seven-tenths down or something like that, and I had to make huge adjustments to the wing in order to try and rebalance the car for some reason,” he explained.

“So I’m not sure quite what went wrong. We’ll deep dive into it, but I think ultimately, we lost the chance to fight for the front row going into quali with the balance we ended up with.

“So it’s a bit of a surprise, but I’m still grateful. I got everything I could out of it at the end with the balance that I had. The car was on the edge and I was on the edge as much as I could be.”

Hamilton added: “I don’t think we went in the wrong way with the setup, that’s the thing. I think the tiniest tweaks were like a millimetre here, a millimetre there – the tiniest tweaks, but we really need to look into what switched, because the car was completely different to what it was before, and I didn’t have any rear end for some reason, which I had good balance most of the weekend.

“I do think with the pace that we had on Friday, we could have been closer. These guys started pulling out some amazing times at the end, so fair play to them, and we will push hard tomorrow. Hopefully, we can keep up and who knows, maybe we could have a really good start.”