Mercedes team leader Toto Wolf felt that the Red Bull driver's rush off the track in the last flying lap and triggering the yellow flag had in vain Hamilton's efforts to hit the pole. But is that actually the case?
At Zandvoort Circuit, the W13 was extremely competitive in both practice and qualifying, especially Hamilton, who was particularly fast in qualifying in the first two quarters. In Qualifying Q3, Hamilton's first two run-offs in the last flight lap were slightly slower than Verstappen's pole laps, but in the third tick, the Britons almost erased Verstappen's advantage, especially at 11th and 12th turns faster than the Dutchman, so the team had every reason to believe that the 7-time world champion had every chance of getting into the first pole position of the season, as can be inferred from the team's GPS data. Hamilton was 0.2 seconds ahead of Verstappen at turns 11 and 12, and before Turn 11, Hamilton was just 0.1 seconds slower than Verstappen. If this figure is true, then it should be Hamilton who has obtained the pole position.
The team also admitted after qualifying that the team's goal this weekend is to get pole position and win the regular race, and on Friday and Saturday, the Hamilton W13 was very competitive in lap and long distance speed. If it weren't for the yellow flag raised by Perez, Hamilton would have had a 0.1 second advantage to get pole position, and looking back at Hungary a month ago, the W13's speed on the high-pressure track has indeed improved a lot, and Hamilton may have missed Russell's second pole position of the season after the Hungarian team.
After the race, there was a review analysis that the W13 car could be so competitive in Zandvoort, not only because the car was more adapted to the high downforce characteristics of the track, but also because the team used a lower ground clearance than spa, the team thought that because of the implementation of the TD039 technical instructions, the performance of the car would be closer to Red Bull and Ferrari, but the effect of Spa, the team is obviously still wondering whether to continue the development of the baseplate, and the performance of the Netherlands W13 proves, The prerequisite for Silver Arrow Racing Performance Unlock is still to be on the backplane as close to the ground as possible.
Although at Zandvoort, the Silver Arrow team was equipped with a lower baseplate, but still needed to compromise in some car settings, and it was clear that this weekend the team lost the lap time in the departmental high and medium high stages, such as the team admitting that the speed of the car was significantly slower at Turn 7, but enhancing the mechanical characteristics in the low speed bend, allowing the car to perform better than both Red Bull and Ferrari in the 11th and 12th.
Hamilton said in an interview at the race that the current performance of the W13 car is too capricious, but the potential of the car is there, but I don't know if the car will be good or bad in the next race. It looks very emotional.