Lewis Hamilton makes a somber Mercedes ‘rescue’ comment as he addresses Toto Wolff’s spit

Hamilton will start Saturday’s sprint race at Imola from 13th place, two places behind his young teammate George Russell after another dismal qualifying session for Mercedes

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What went wrong with Mercedes and can they recover?

Lewis Hamilton was heartbroken when speaking of the need to “save” his weekend episode again. a dismal qualifying performance out of Mercedes.

The Silver Arrows constantly fought for speed Qualification in Imola and barely scratched through the first part of the session. George Russell was relatively safe in Q1, but Hamilton was just four-thousandths of a second away from crashing at the first hurdle for the second time this season.

But Q3 was behind both on Friday afternoon as they couldn’t set a time fast enough to start Saturday’s sprint race in the front half of the field. Instead, Russell had to settle for 11th place, while Hamilton will be two places down the grid for the short-form race.

The result appeared to cause a spat of sorts between Hamilton and team boss Toto Wolff as they were spotted on camera having a heated-looking exchange in the Mercedes garage. When asked later what happened, the seven-time world champion didn’t deny that there was a dispute, simply saying: “These are all internal things, so I prefer not to share it.”

Hamilton was visibly dejected as he turned to the TV cameras to describe another stunning performance for himself and his team. “Obviously it’s disappointing,” he said Sky Sports . “We came here with optimism and everyone works really hard at the factory so it’s disappointing when things don’t come together.

“I think we underperformed as a team today. There are things we should have done but didn’t do. We’ll work as hard as we can to get up front in the sprint race – it’s going to be a tough race but hopefully tomorrow is better weather wise and who knows maybe we can move up. We’ll just keep working hard…every weekend is a salvation.”

Things might have improved slightly for them had it not been for an interrupted session. There were five red flags in total in qualifying as the drivers struggled with the changeable weather conditions of northern Italy, and one of these caused a delay that killed Mercedes’ chances.

Neither Hamilton nor Russell had a chance to improve on their times, as one of the red flags resulted in a brief lull in the session, which proved to be enough time for a wave of rain to sweep the track. It was bad timing and neither driver bothered to come back from the pits, knowing that in worse track conditions they wouldn’t be able to set a faster time than before.

Looking on the positive side, Russell wanted to point out that their starting position for Sunday’s race might end up being a bit better. “We’ve always had a little trouble getting the temperature in the tires,” he said. “And we always seem to make a bigger leap from the second round onwards. We also saw it in Australia where we were compared to the Alpines and the McLarens – they were a first round qualifier and we had to do it in the third round.

“It was a bit of a shame how the red flags turned out today, but if there’s a weekend where we’re not where we want to be, a sprint weekend is the way to go. So not ideal, but a chance to make up some positions tomorrow.”