Ever since the tussle at the Japanese Grand Prix, the tension between Lewis Hamilton and George Russell seems to be growing exponentially. While the two directly haven’t spoken anything about it, the comments and the feeling do point toward the beginning of a new teammate rivalry. Amid all this, Lewis Hamilton rains on George Russell’s happy parade despite himself having benefited from a shocking stroke of luck. What did Hamilton say?

George Russell qualified in the P3 at the Qatar Grand Prix before being promoted to P2 after Lando Norris’ time was deleted for track limits. After having a subpar practice session, Russell seemed ecstatic about his performance. However, Lewis Hamilton was down in P5. But not for long as Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’s lap time being deleted meant he would start the race on Sunday in P3. Massive stroke of luck, many would say. However, despite all this, Hamilton didn’t seem content and chose to rain in on Russell’s happiness.

According to @fiagirly’s Tweet, Lewis Hamilton during the post-qualifying conference said, “Not massively [satisfied] but, it’s great for the team, to be on the first two rows. Difficult at the beginning of the session, tricky conditions out there with the wind. Ultimately it was a pretty average session for me.”

Hamilton wasn’t satisfied with the result of the qualifying and called it an average session for him. One can only think that the 7x champ wanted to beat his teammate but just didn’t have the pace. Was this Hamilton’s indirect challenge to Russell saying that the 7x champ got P3 despite having an average session?

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Nonetheless, both Mercedes in the Top 3 came as a shock for us and George Russell himself as well. But why? 

George Russell shocked by Mercedes’ qualifying pace at Qatar

While Lewis Hamilton wasn’t happy about how his qualifying went, George Russell was super happy with the step up that the team had taken after the practice session. Russell was P8 in practice while Hamilton was P13. However, the improvements made by the team shocked Russell as he made comments about it during the post-race interview.

George Russell, during the post-race race interview as heard on the F1TV broadcast, said, “Super windy here. All the sand was blowing onto the track and we went into the qualifying and the lap time was immense compared to what we were doing this morning. So, that was good fun. Really happy to be P3. Bit better than what we expected.”

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