Lewis Hamilton admits suffering at Japanese GP as disqualification has lasting effect

Lewis Hamilton blamed his underwhelming qualifying result for the on a "knock-on effect" from his disqualification in Shanghai two weeks ago. Both he and team-mate were stripped of their results at the because their cars failed post-race checks.

Leclerc's car was underweight but because there was too much wear to the plank on the bottom of the car. That suggested it was being run too close to the ground and, as a precaution, Hamilton confirmed his ride height has been raised this weekend.

But a higher-running car means giving up some performance and that showed in qualifying on Saturday. While team-mate Leclerc was fourth fastest, had to settle for eighth place on the grid.

Speaking afterwards, the seven-time champion said: "Obviously not good enough from my side, P8 is not great. I was happy to get into Q3 obviously as it was a really tight battle out there with everyone. I just didn't get great laps in in Q3.

"We are running [the car] higher than we would like, but everyone is in the same boat in that respect. Particularly after the last race, we're a bit higher than we want to be and that is the knock-on effect from the weekend that we had before.

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"But Charles did an amazing lap today - we went in different directions with the setup and I had a lot of understeer and just couldn't dial it in throughout qualifying."

Some rain is forecast overnight heading into Sunday and Hamilton is hoping that the wet weather sticks around long enough to affect the race. He added: "I'm excited - I genuinely love the rain. It's going to be tricky but, usually when you have a qualifying like I just had, you hope for the rain. So I hope that it stays."

Leclerc, however, reported that he was not having to run his car too high and suggested why he managed to get more out of his car than Hamilton did. He said: "My driving style seems to work a bit better and that gave me a lot more confidence in qualifying."

Understandably, he sounded a lot more upbeat than the Brit as he reflected on qualifying behind only the two cars and . Leclerc added: "For sure. It think the lap was actually really, really good - I put everything into that lap and there wasn't much I could have done better.

"Yesterday I was quite happy because we worked really well and unlocked some performance in the car. Today in quali it started to go away from us a little bit, especially in Q3 - I had either a lot of understeer or a lot of oversteer. But, all in all, the lap I did, I was really happy with it.

"We need to keep working, there's still a big gap to McLaren and , and this is our target - to be back winning races. As a whole, and it's difficult to say this when you're P4, but it's been positive because I really felt a lot more comfortable with the car today."