Hamilton and Mercedes arrived in Monaco hopeful of taking another step forward after appearing to go a long way to remedying its porpoising issue with its Spain updates last weekend.
After struggling with bouncing over the Monaco bumps in practice on Friday, Hamilton could only qualify eighth for Mercedes on Saturday.
The seven-time world champion sat sixth after the opening runs in Q3, but was unable to improve on his final lap due to a red flag that came out due to the crash involving Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz.
Hamilton was uneasy about his chances of moving up the order on Sunday given the difficulty of overtaking in Monaco, saying he was “hoping that the weather plays up and it creates opportunity, and maybe people do different strategies”.
“It would be nice to have some luck for once,” Hamilton added. “I’ve been having [bad luck] all year. It’s bound to stop at some stage.”
Hamilton had outpaced Mercedes teammate George Russell during the first runs in Q3, only for Russell to improve late in the session and grab sixth on the grid.
Hamilton finished over a second off Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc’s pole position time, but said he anticipated Monaco would be difficult for Mercedes given its struggles through the final sector in Barcelona all weekend.
“I kind of expected it, we weren’t very good in the low speed in the last race anyway,” Hamilton said.
“Actually in the race, it was OK, but [not] on a single lap so I anticipated it would be difficult here.
“I think it’s worse than we anticipated, because of the bumps. It’s super bouncy and bumpy for us everywhere, slow, medium and high [speed corners]. So, challenging.”
Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff did not think the struggles over the bumps pointed to a return of porpoising for the W13 car, as it was “hitting the ground in a very different way”.
“We don't have porpoising returning, we're bottoming out,” Wolff explained when Motorsport.com asked him about the bouncing issues. "The car's too stiff, too low, and it's just the same gap like it was in qualifying in Barcelona."
“So it's probably realistic where we ended up. The car is good for fifth and sixth and [Lando] Norris beat us to it, but we shouldn't have expected any miracles, particularly here in Monaco.”
