A despondent Lewis Hamilton admitted he failed to get the most out of his car after qualifying ninth for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Ferrari’s new driver was almost six tenths of a second slower than his team mate Charles Leclerc, who has been promoted to the front row of the grid after the Mercedes drivers were penalised. Hamilton will also start behind Carlos Sainz Jnr, the driver he replaced at Ferrari, who is now at Williams.Having come into the weekend hoping to gain the benefit of Ferrari’s new floor upgrade, the qualifying result was a blow for Hamilton.
“The positive is our car clearly is a lot better than what I’m delivering with it,” he said. “Charles did a great job with it today, so big apologies to the team for not doing the job.”
Leclerc, who qualified three tenths of a second off pole winner Oscar Piastri, said Ferrari had worked hard to rebound from its disappointing start to the season.
“It’s the result of a lot of work,” he said. “At the beginning of the season, we obviously weren’t where we wanted to be and [for] two or three races I’ve gone in an interesting direction set-up-wise, which seems to help me to extract a bit more out of the car.
“That’s what I’m trying to do every weekend. For now, it seems to be better and better, which is a good sign for the future.”
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He doubts he could have got much more out of the car. “I’m happy with the lap,” said Leclerc. “It was very tricky to put everything together, but I think I did. There wasn’t much more inside the car.”
He is sure Ferrari’s floor upgrade made a difference as the gaps between the teams are so small. “The team has done a really, really good job,” said Leclerc. “We’ve all pushed quite a lot in the last few weeks because we’ve been struggling with performance.
“I know that at the factory they’ve been pushing like crazy to try and bring this floor a bit earlier on, and that definitely made the difference, because if I look at the gap with P4, it’s not that much and I’m pretty sure that without the floor I wouldn’t be P3. So that’s already one position won.
“I’m curious to see what it will do tomorrow. However it’s probably not the best track to extract the maximum out of this new upgrade. In the next few weekends we shall see more of it.”
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Doggy
12th April 2025, 21:23
It takes a lot to admit this. Kudos to Lewis
Applebook
13th April 2025, 4:59
Credit to admitting being too slow when you’re 6 tenths off your teammate is pretty generous. It’s not as if Lewis can have the excuse of a “problematic” part anymore for this weekend. This is eerily similar to Russell’s dominance of last year. Antonelli looking pretty good.
BenHur
12th April 2025, 23:14
Yep, and bears do it in the woods too.
SteveP
13th April 2025, 7:59
To use a Sainz phrase, it happens – just ask the guys starting 6th and 7th on the grid.
One has this year’s dominant car, and the other seems to be having swings in performance now his car isn’t dominant
Edvaldo
13th April 2025, 0:33
He’s looking like a 40-years-old guy trying to keep up with the 20 somethings.
Mike Williams (@mikejtw)
13th April 2025, 9:02
I think it’s time for Hamilton to admit that his best days are long gone and retire from racing whilst he still has some credit.
MichaelN
13th April 2025, 9:15
Hamilton does need to do better, but he doesn’t need to lead the team so his target is certainly reachable. And, for all his qualifying woes in recent years, it was Hamilton who capitalised on Ferraris form in China to take sprint pole and win. Not Leclerc.
BLS (@brightlampshade)
13th April 2025, 13:33
Whilst Hamilton doesn’t “need” to beat Leclerc overall this season, he does need to be getting the better of him on a regular basis come the end of this season. If he wants a shot at 2026 (assuming Ferrari get it right) then he needs to have his woes all sorted before next season starts.
I have my doubts, but he has a strong record for disproving doubters!