Damage limitation for Hamilton

The Austrian Grand Prix looked like a race that would give Briton Lewis Hamilton a chance to close the gap in the title chase.

The Mercedes driver appeared to hit the ground running at the Red Bull Ring as Hamilton appeared to find the speed around the track quicker than anyone else, including team-mate Nico Rosberg.

Hamilton looked set to cruise to pole position, but with Hamilton’s natural aggressive style he over pushed himself during the final stage of qualifying and failed to set a time during two qualifying runs, putting him ninth on the grid and immediately on the back foot.

‘After what happened yesterday in qualifying, today was all about damage limitation for me, so I’m as happy as I can be with a P2 finish. I have had the pace in the car all weekend here but I wasn’t able to capitalise on that, so getting second place from a bad weekend is pretty good, I guess. Hamilton told formula1.com.

Despite Hamilton being downbeat, losing another seven points in the Formula One World Championship standings to Rosberg, Hamilton should be pleased with his performance.

He was the stand-out driver all weekend and his opening lap was one of the best seen in recent years.

Starting ninth, he finished the opening lap fourth and went on to take positions from Williams to get within 1.4 seconds of Rosberg.

Unfortunately for Hamilton at this stage of the race he just didn’t have the brakes to challenge for the lead. Eventually dropping back before putting in a final challenge in the closing stages, but it wasn’t to be.

‘I had a rocket start – it’s something we’ve be working hard on all year and it was one of the best I’ve ever had. You can’t ever plan what’s going to happen but I managed to put the car in all the right places and climb to P4 by the end of the first lap. We were managing the brakes a lot today, because I was in traffic for most of the race and it was the most important thing to bring the car home, so that was a real balancing act. But the strategy worked really well for me to get into second position, then I tried to start pushing Nico – but he didn’t make any mistakes and I didn’t have the chance to overtake.