Sergey Sirotkin felt the rain that fell during Qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix on Saturday offered his Williams Martini Racing but found himself last after three times finding himself compromised by another driver whilst on a quick lap.
The SMP Racing-backed Russian was hoping to advance into at least Q2, where he would have joined team-mate Lance Stroll, but he was forced to abort laps when conditions were at their best, meaning his best time was more than seven-tenths of a second down on his team-mate.
Sirotkin, who had made it into Q2 last weekend at the Hockenheimring, is still searching for the first points of his Formula 1 career after a disappointing first half of the season, but he felt luck was not on his side on Saturday, which leaves him with a mountain to climb if he is to break into the top ten on Sunday.
“I’m very disappointed with qualifying,” said Sirotkin. “With the rain today, it was a big possibility for us and I was looking forward to it as it could have been our best qualifying of the year.
“In such unpredictable conditions, it’s very difficult to guess which lap is going to count. Every time I went out we decided to push on the first lap, which was good, but in doing so I would catch the car ahead of me so I would have to back off on the following lap.
“This happened to me three times on my three sets of tyres and unfortunately each time the rain stopped and I was not on my quick lap when the track was drier.
“It’s impossible to predict that’s going to happen, so we were a bit unlucky which I’m very sorry about.”
