Lewis Hamilton was encouraged by the performance of Ferrari’s upgraded floor after testing it for the first time in practice today.
“The upgrade’s definitely working,” he told the official F1 channel after first practice. “So a big, big thank you to everyone back home for working so hard on bringing the upgrades because it’s never an easy thing. It’s a lot of work that goes on in the wind tunnel and a lot work that goes into fabricating and putting together these floors.“It’s just good to see that we’re taking steps forward. We’re trying to now extract more from it, I hope that we can make the right steps overnight to tomorrow.”
Hamilton said his car “felt pretty decent” after they made some set-up changes for the second practice session but he is still trying to make it perform more consistently over a lap.
“I’m just trying to pull the laps together, having a car that’s easy to drive and that’s consistent through the lap at the moment,” he said. “It’s a bit different between low, medium and high [speed corners] as you often have so we’re just trying to finesse it, trying to tweak it and then make sure that we have good long-run pace because that’s where you need to be strong here, particularly.”
He ended second practice eighth on the times sheets, a second off Oscar Piastri in the McLaren. Hamilton’s team mate Charles Leclerc was fourth, half a second off the pace, and doubts they will be able to get significantly closer to McLaren.
“I’m trying to push into a direction that allows me to extract a bit more out of the car, but to be honest, the potential of the car remains the same and we’re just not fast enough,” he said.
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“When we look at the McLaren, they are just on another planet for now. It’s annoying, but it’s the way it is, and it actually motivates me to try and close that gap as soon as possible. But they are incredibly fast.
“It’s been a tricky session because it’s so much warmer than the test and obviously you go into a session expecting the grip that you had at the test and it’s completely different. So we’ve got to readjust the car and there will be a lot of work during the night to try and turn the situation around more.”
Leclerc confirmed Ferrari’s floor changes worked, “so that’s positive, but unfortunately the gap to McLaren is still too big.”
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roger norman
11th April 2025, 19:53
Lewis makes sure that the people that work on his car know it’s a team sport.
Ben
11th April 2025, 22:08
Watching the session I don’t think Ferrari are as far off as the times suggest. Hamilton was only 0.15 slower than Piastri after 2 sectors on his final run. He made 2 big mistakes in the final sector but without those I think he’d be much closer.
Leclerc also had a scruffy first sector on his fastest lap.
I don’t think they’ll be fighting for pole, but P3 could be a genuine possibility. Of course they could lose out when everyone turns the engines up tomorrow, but based on todays times I’d have them 0.2-0.4 off the pace rather than the 0.6-1 second on paper.
MichaelN
11th April 2025, 23:10
Thanks for that context. It’s all so close and the cars and tyres so sensitive that even a tiny mistake makes the lap essentially meaningless for the purposes of assessing the car’s performance.
McLaren ahead seems obvious enough, but hopefully there can be a bit of a squabble for third.
XM (@xmf1)
12th April 2025, 2:47
I may be wrong, but what I read from this is Lewis insisted the car be made easier for him to drive despite making it slower even though Charles could handle it and go faster before the upgrade. And it’s moving away from the direction that could make it go faster.
anon
12th April 2025, 9:24
@xmf1 the point of the new floor is to increase overall downforce whilst still maintaining a similar handling balance, so the idea that it is meant to favour Hamilton and disadvantage Leclerc doesn’t really make any sense.
I know that there has been a desire to create drama where none exists, but the two viewpoints don’t have to be in conflict. Hamilton’s comments indicate that the upgrade has succeeded in what it was meant to do, which was to increase total downforce. However, both drivers have wanted to reduce the amount of understeer the car has, and Leclerc is referring to the fact that both drivers have been waiting for an upgrade to improve initial turn in performance.
That is not a surprise, as it seems that upgrades to change the handling balance are not coming until later in the season as they involve more substantial modifications to the car.