Lewis Hamilton’s qualifying woes continue as he admitted he is “just not doing the job” for Ferrari. His final season with Mercedes was blighted by Saturday struggles and, except for the pole he turned into victory at the China sprint race last month, his poor one-lap form has continued.
He made the top 10 shootout but only Yuki Tsunoda was slower than Hamilton in that final part of qualifying and he will start today’s race ninth. The seven-time champion apologised to his team immediately after the session and said: “It was just about my performance, my poor performance.
“There’s no reason, I’m just not doing the job. It happens every Saturday.” On the other side of the garage, Hamilton’s qualifying specialist team-mate Charles Leclerc has found improvements with every race weekend.
He qualified third, Ferrari’s best result of 2025 to date, and smiled as he explained: “I’ve gone in quite an extreme direction in the last few weekends in terms of setup, which fits my driving style but is also very tricky to drive.
“But it seems that I’ve been able to extract a bit more out of the car and race after race it seems to be better, which is a positive sign for the future. But it makes it very difficult in some parts of qualifying.”
McLaren secured pole position, an expected outcome given their dominance in practice. But while Oscar Piastri delivered the goods, team-mate Lando Norris struggled and only managed to go sixth fastest.
And the Brit glumly said after the session: “I’m just not quick enough.” Asked what had gone wrong, he bluntly replied: “Honestly, no idea, just not quick enough. It’s just another day, so I’ll look into things and see why I struggled so much today and try again tomorrow.
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“I’ve been slow this whole weekend, to be honest, so it’s nothing too surprising. Honestly, I’ve just been off it. I don’t know, I feel like I’ve just never driven a Formula 1 car before. I’m struggling a lot, I don’t know why and I need to try to find some answers.”
Another big name much lower down the order than he is used to is Max Verstappen. He complained about his Red Bull car over the radio throughout the session and the braking issues he was dealing with contributed to a fastest lap which was good enough for only seventh place on the grid.
Speaking afterwards, the Dutchman said: “All weekend it has been difficult, just struggling on the brake feel and stopping power. And then, yeah, this tyres also had very difficult grip. We’ve turned the car around a lot and nothing seems to give a clear direction, so I guess that also shows that we are struggling with other things.
“I’m just trying to do my best. It’s been a difficult weekend for us. Tomorrow I’ll try to get as many points as I can, which I do every single weekend so it’s not like there’s any difference. I have no idea where we will be in terms of race pace, but at least we’re in the middle of the pack so, hopefully, a bit of excitement.”
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