Toto Wolff has issued an apology to Lewis Hamilton over Mercedes’ handling of Q1, which ended with the seven-time F1 World Champion eliminated in 18th place.

Hamilton’s last qualifying session for Mercedes, coming after 12 years with the team, resulted in an ignominious ending as he was knocked out in Q1 and facing a difficult race from the start towards the back.

Toto Wolff: Mercedes totally let Lewis Hamilton down

Hamilton’s elimination in Q1 came about as Mercedes put Hamilton out on track at the start of the session to run in a set of hards – putting him out of sync with the rest of the runners.

Hamilton looked set to eclipse Russell’s time in Q1 and progress onto the second part of qualifying before he struck a bollard that had been knocked onto the track by Kevin Magnussen’s Haas as the Danish driver left space for Hamilton to pass him.

This astonishing bit of bad luck meant Hamilton was powerless to improve and was knocked out as a result.

But the way events played out has resulted in Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff issuing an apology to his driver, pointing the finger at the execution of the session as being to blame for the lowly starting position.

“I just need to apologise to Lewis,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1.

“Also to everyone in the team that worked so hard in making it a great end for him. He was the quicker guy with the setup we chose on the car to experiment for next year.

“We totally let him down. Idiotic mistake of not going earlier. Inexcusable, inexcusable. I’ve rarely been so down about what has happened. Maybe it summarises the last races we’ve had with him but this is the worst part of it because it was just idiotic.”

“I think we were lucky that both of them wrestled their way through the other traffic. Maybe without the bollard it would have worked.

“You don’t risk so much in a Q1 where we easily had the pace to make it out there. Our most valuable racing driver ever, the most valuable greatest driver of this sport, gets out in Q1 because we make a mistake. It doesn’t ruin the legacy we had with him but I can only say sorry to him.”

Lewis Hamilton feeling ‘pretty chill’ ahead of final Mercedes race

Hamilton, heading to the media zone, appeared in a philosophical mood as he reflected on the session – there was no hint of anger or frustration about how his final qualifying session with his team had played out.

“Well we did something different, we went out on the hard tyre which was odd still in qualifying and then.. we’re just out of sequence to everybody else so we were the last on track and I was the last because I chose to go second so…” he said.

“Ran out of time basically, then I got the bollard from a back-marker in the end. Up until that point, I was the same pace as George, so yeah…”

“It is what it is. Definitely not a great qualifying session but we’ve had so many great ones so its okay.”

Asked about the emotions he’s feeling with just 24 hours left before his final race, Hamilton said: “I don’t have any emotions, I’m pretty chill.

“I don’t feel the pain… I think I’m just being very present. I’ve been enjoying every moment.

“I’ve got the car in a really good place, set up changes we’ve made to the car in the last five races this weekend, the car has been really different in the last five races – it’s been feeling really great.”

The seven-time F1 World Champion revealed that he has had to reset his hopes for the Grand Prix itself following qualifying.

“The car has been… that’s where we struggled the most as a team this weekend, but the car was feeling really good in general,” he said.

“FP3 I was third, so honestly, I thought we could be fighting for podium – my race pace was second quickest. But it wasn’t meant to be.

“It’s not gonna be easy to overtake tomorrow. I’m gonna work on strategy now and, instead of fighting for a podium now, it’s see how far I can get into the top 10.”

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