‘Absolutely useless’ Lewis Hamilton tells Ferrari to ‘change driver’ after another poor quali

Lewis Hamilton said Ferrari “probably need to change driver” and described himself as “absolutely useless” following his twelfth in Hungary qualifying.

While Charles Leclerc produced an incredible lap to take pole, Hamilton was again questioning what went wrong, suffering his fourth Q2 exit of the season.

Lewis Hamilton tells Ferrari to ‘change driver’ after Q2 exit

It was at the Hungaroring two years ago that Hamilton secured his 104th and most recent pole, but those days have never looked further away with the seven-time World Champion exiting quali before the final 10 shootout.

As Leclerc was taking his car to pole, Hamilton spoke to Sky Sports and described himself as “absolutely useless” before telling Ferrari to “change driver.

“It’s just me every time,” he said.

“I’m useless, absolutely useless.

“Team has no problem, you’ve seen the car’s on pole. They probably need to change driver.”

Even before qualifying, Hamilton was in a reflective mood. Asked what his plans for the upcoming summer break were, he said “there’ll be some tears” from what has been “the most intense” season of his career.

“The last god knows how many seasons have been hard in their own way. This one has definitely been the most intense one, I would say, just from a work perspective.

“Integrating into a new culture and into a new team. It’s not gone smoothly in all areas, and it’s been a real battle.

“I definitely need to get away and recharge, be around the kids, laugh, let go. I’m sure there’ll be some tears at some point and I think that’s really healthy.”

Having heard his “absolutely useless” comment, Sky F1 pundit Jamie Chadwick suggested it was “definitely not the driver.”

“Really difficult and it’s definitely not the driver,” the current European Le Mans Series racer said. “He’s definitely not useless.

“It’s a hard listen, hearing him say that, because I don’t think the Lewis that we know is that self-critical, but recently we’ve started to hear this.

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“Last year at Mercedes, particularly around qualifying, he started to allude to really struggling with qualifying and he was very self-critical. It was hard to listen to because that’s not the confident nature that he carries himself with.

“He’s admitted that the car’s on pole, it’s not the car, it’s him. But I find that hard to believe. There might be a tenth or so between them.

“Today it was a bad moment to have a bad lap, and that put him out in Q2, and Charles then managed to go to put it on pole. It’s very hard to pinpoint. They’ve got the data, they can see why.

“Before, Charles was talking about different directions of setup, and maybe as the temperatures dropped it helped a little bit more.”

Read next: Hungarian GP: Charles Leclerc stuns McLaren to snatch pole