Lewis Hamilton hoping for rain in the Brazilian GP after difficult qualifying

The Briton will start from fourth position, behind Jenson Button, and he conceded he was not happy with his showing after failing to match his McLaren team-mate's pace.

"A little bit disappointing, really," said Hamilton. "We are still on the second row but of course we would love to be higher up.

"My performance I'm not too happy about in the sense that I wasn't quick enough. I'm a couple of tenths off Jenson, so clearly the car can be a little bit quicker, but the Red Bulls were just massively quick today."

Hamilton said qualifying was a "bit of a struggle" for him, but he reckons the predicted rain will give him a good opportunity to recover in the race tomorrow.

"It was okay. It was a bit of a struggle really in the car. Just struggled to pull any more time out of the lap. Still we are on the second row, which is not a bad position to start from.

"I've started from fourth a lot of the times here. Let's hope tomorrow is wet, so we wait and see. It can be very tricky here with the weather and I think tomorrow is going to rain, so that makes the chances even greater.

"Four is a good number for me, and let's hope we can turn that into something more positive tomorrow."