Hamilton bemoans 'poor' performance

The McLaren driver set the pace in Q1 shortly after it was restarted.

But the world champion was pushed down the order while others made the most of being on track while conditions were at their best and was left unable to make it into Q2 for the first time since Silverstone.

"That was a pretty poor performance from us," said Hamilton. "Our car was so bad in the wet, you couldn't even go flat-out on the straights. That's how little grip I had.

"We were running a dry set-up, which is a lot stiffer than you would normally go for in the wet, so that obviously hampered us. You can see the downforce levels really show in these conditions."

With a few minutes left, and laptimes having dropped off by more than seven seconds, Hamilton had a frightening moment exiting the quick turn five.

After aquaplaning off the track, he then spun twice on the wet grass, but did not hit anything and was able to continue slowly back to the pits.

"I was only on 70 per cent throttle then," the British driver added. "And it just let loose on me."

Hamilton's team-mate Heikki Kovalainen fared only marginally better, qualifying his McLaren 16th as neither car made it into Q2.