Lewis Hamilton believes car failed before he went off

Although a heavy clout across the kerbs on the exit initially appeared to have caused the hydraulic issues that stopped him during Q1 to leave him 14th on the grid, the world champion says his steering had already lost power on the entry.

Asked by Sky if the kerb strike had caused the problem, Hamilton said: "No, we use the kerb the same every lap.

"We got to the kerb and just before the kerb the steering broke, so that was the issue."

Despite coming from the back of the field to finish second at Silverstone a fortnight ago, the Briton is not convinced a repeat charge is on the cards this time out.

"At a track like this not really, no," he said. "This is one of the worst ones for overtaking. I will do what I can from there.

"These things happen, all you can do is try to gather your thoughts, put your energy, any negative energy, whatever energy you have and put it towards trying to do your best next day.

"Live to fight another day, another opportunity to rise - I'll try, I'll give everything tomorrow to see how high I can get up, but it's not going to be like Silverstone."

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff suspected that Hamilton's hydraulics had broken after he hit the kerb, but he was awaiting a full investigation by the team once they had the car back.

"The issue was that we seem to have damaged a bit on the car jumping over the kerb and that caused a hydraulic leak, but the car is just coming back so we need to check whether that was really the case," Wolff told Sky.

"Then, obviously we are not good enough on pace to make it onto pole."

Although Hamilton's team-mate Valtteri Bottas secured a spot on the front row of the grid, Wolff said Mercedes was lacking against Ferrari on both the car and engine front.

"It was a mega lap, particularly the last sector," he said. "He put it all together but it was at the moment not good enough performance wise.

"We just need to get the car and the engine on to a higher level.

"We are losing on the straights but I don't want to sound sore about it. We just need to improve."