Lewis Hamilton said he doesn’t feel like he’s getting more comfortable in his Ferrari as he was unhappy with his qualifying performance again in Jeddah.
The Ferrari driver made the cut for Q3 by just seven thousandths of a second. From there he set a time good enough for seventh on the grid, but was out-qualified by the Williams of former Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz Jnr.“The lap was bad,” Hamilton told Viaplay after qualifying.
However he said the session as a whole had been “better than I anticipated” after practice.
“Obviously, I’d been 13th all weekend, so to find myself getting into Q3 was a positive for me. Still, the last lap was pretty bad.
“Every time I get to Q3 all the hard work kind of disappears. But anyway, P7 is better than nothing, so I’ll try and do something from there tomorrow.”
Hamilton struggled for pace in the hotter conditions of final practice. “I couldn’t get that last tyre to work,” he told his race engineer Ricardo Adami at the end of the session. “It was a good improvement, though, we are getting there,” Adami replied.
However speaking after qualifying Hamilton said he doesn’t feel comfortable in the car yet: “No, simple as [that], I don’t feel that.”
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Asked what he needs to get to grips with the SF-25 he replied: “A brain transplant.”
In qualifying Hamilton lapped 0.531 seconds slower than his team mate Charles Leclerc, who will start from fourth on the grid.
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur expects the team will be more competitive in race trim than they were in qualifying.
“P4 is not that bad, P7 is a bit more difficult, but overall it’s not a matter of position,” he told the official F1 channel. “For me it’s more a matter of pace.
“We struggled from the beginning in turn one. Compared to Max [Verstappen], I think we are losing two tenths and a half in turn one and three tenths over the lap. It means that we really need to find a solution for this turn one.
“I think in the race it will be a different story when the temperature in the tyres has stabilised, but it’s true that from the beginning it’s tough for us.”
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2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
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SpaFrancorchamps (@spafrancorchamps)
19th April 2025, 21:21
I wonder how long it will take before Hamilton announces his retirement from the sport. He is not getting younger and after Russell drove circles around him it is now Leclerc doing the same. The young ones have surpassed him.
Ferrari never should had gotten rid of Carlos. He was on-par with Leclerc and they really had a great driver pairing there. Lewis is a big champion, but it has been over ever since they took that eighth championship from him. Something changed.
Justin Walpole
19th April 2025, 21:44
I don’t think it’s true that he’s never been the same since 2021. In 2022 he was still very good but slightly unlucky. In 2023 he was very good. He really started to go downhill in 2024, and he now looks finished.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
20th April 2025, 15:54
yeah thats why he had no problems in Silverstone winning. In mixed conditions.
David
19th April 2025, 23:18
He just got old.
I thought there was a good chance he would retire at the end of 2025 when the Ferrari move was announced (because I doubted it would work out). Seems to be going awry already, there’s a very good chance he will walk away at the end of the year.
He didn’t move to Ferrari for history. He moved for money. Toto knew Hamilton’s time was up, and he pulled a blinder by letting Ferrari think they were “stealing” him. Toto didn’t actually want him any more, but also didn’t want the embarrassment of dropping him after all the success they had shared in the 2010s.
Applebook
19th April 2025, 23:53
Sainz was never on par with Leclerc. You might want to recheck their qualifying stats. On points totals, they were close, but Charles was screwed so often while leading races. Ferrari should have kept Sainz.
Doh
20th April 2025, 0:25
It partly seems like he’s not motivated unless he has a car which can potentially win (Silverstone 2024). That wasn’t all that long ago and he drove very well. Is it anything to do with ad21? Maybe..
Probably also the car changes and age haven’t helped. The further the cars go from those 07-08 cars the worse it gets for him I’d say. And 2022 was the biggest jump. It seems like the best way to drive current F1 cars is like GT cars rather than open wheel
I can’t see him continuing past 2026 if Ferrari are nowhere in the new regs. Shame. And shame on the sport too.
If it can be called a sport. WWE has more sport involved than F1
Leeroy
20th April 2025, 2:37
I think its just the age cliff. Sadly its inevitable for all of us, and we already know the George went past him last year.
If AD21 is still affecting his performance 5 years later (I dont think it is) then he is now too mentally fragile for F1 where milliseconds make the difference.
Riccard
20th April 2025, 8:29
It’s not “shame on the sport” if cars evolve over time and people who slow with age eventually exit.
It’s just… actually being a sport.
Time will catch up with Doohan, Bearman, Antonelli and Hadjar eventually. Hamilton’s just coming a little sooner.
Ferdi
20th April 2025, 9:05
It’ called ageing. And in Lewis’ case one can also add ‘unrealistic expectations’. Even if in 2026 he would get the fastest car again, he would still have to beat a team mate that is not exactly at Bottas or Rosberg level.
Ben
19th April 2025, 21:33
Surely a car transplant would be much easier. Stick the old man in the Williams and let him get destroyed by Albon instead of wasting a top seat.
Back to back races he’s been outqualified by Sainz. It’s not good enough, his retirement can’t come soon enough.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
20th April 2025, 9:44
Awful comment. You obviously know nothing. You want him to be replaced by some 18 year old do you. The sport is more interesting with him there.
Ben
20th April 2025, 10:28
Oh how refreshing @phil-f1-21, someone with an opposing view jumping straight to the insults.
Well I know how to use a question mark in a sentence.
Where did I say I wanted him replaced by an 18 year old? I literally referred to switching him with Sainz, who I believe isn’t 18.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
20th April 2025, 10:44
You referred to ‘sticking the old man in the Williams’, etc. Is that not insulting? You did not actually say he should be replaced by Sainz. Just that Sainz outqualified him.
Besides what difference does one race or qualifying make? People are always qualifying out of position. Should Sainz be driving a McLaren? Because look where Lando is.
t1redmonkey (@t1redmonkey)
19th April 2025, 21:33
I always feel like Ham needs a car that he knows is capable of winning, or he just goes through the motions and doesn’t put 100% into his performances. Of course if you give him that car, then he’ll come alive again. But I doubt Ferrari can give him that in whatever time he has left in the sport.
Applebook
19th April 2025, 23:56
Or he wins when his car is extremely dominant, and his teammate is Bottas. It is beyond absurd to claim that the guy is unmotivated. His ego is so massive that he would give anything to outpace Russell and Charles. Like most F1 drivers, their chief motivation is beating the guy in the same car as him.
cdavman (@cdavman)
19th April 2025, 21:35
I’m a big Lewis fan and I really wanted to see him get an 8th title. However, I’m now of the opinion he should’ve simply walked away at the end of ’21 like he threatened.
Carrying on like this is just damaging his reputation. It’s sad to see the decline, but there’s no pretending. He simply doesn’t have “it” anymore.
If he’d have walked away after ’21 we’d have been left with the legend. A memory of the peak driver he once was. Now we’ll remember the decline.
Edvaldo
19th April 2025, 21:46
I dont think sportsmen care about this.
Leaving before they have nothing left to avoid the decline is something the fans seen to think about, not the athletes. For them it’s probably worse to do this.
Schumacher left early and was itching to come back, he was even considering taking Massa ‘s car in ’09 instead of Badoer, then came back with Mercedes to add nothing to his legacy.
Valentino Rossi stuck around long enough to become just some other guy in the track by the end.
Next season is a new regulation, new car. If Hamilton dont improve then he should retire.
André
20th April 2025, 1:06
Since you’ve mentioned Valentino Rossi, I will tell you something. Back during the stressful 2021 season, a couple of weeks before the race in Jeddah, I foresaw what would happen to Hamilton in a dream.
In my dream I saw him driving through a fast twisty section – which turned out to be very similar to Jeddah, a track I didn’t know in detail at the time – and crashing into a slower red car that suddenly appeared. The consequence of that crash in the dream was losing the championship and having his subsequent career following a similar path to Valentino Rossi’s, who’s also a 7-time world champion, but in MotoGP. In reality it turned out that Hamilton did crash in Jeddah, but into Max. My dream was almost proven wrong when he was on his way to winning in Abu Dhabi, until the SC. Even more interesting was that from 2022 he started wearing purple with bright green/yellow, which is not much different to the bright green that Rossi used to have for his number 46 (not far from 44).
You mentioned that Rossi became just some other guy on the track by the end, so given what we’ve been watching in the last couple of years, and if I stick to my dream, that will be the fate of Hamilton until he retires.
Out of curiosity, back in 2007 I also foresaw McLaren being disqualified from the championship, because I had a dream early that year where I saw the championship standings and strangely McLaren wasn’t there. That was before the Spy-gate had come out.
To the skeptics, how’s that not a “coincidence” or a “fabrication” of my mind? Simple answer is, we’re more than our bodies and information is non-local. It’s everywhere and we can access it from anywhere, any time. That’s why remote-viewing (scientific protocol to gather non-local information) works (proven beyond scientific doubt), and that’s why sometimes information comes through dreams, when our minds are in a more receptive state.
PlosslF1 (@f1-ploss)
20th April 2025, 3:09
Nice story… missing a fire place..
reggie747
20th April 2025, 10:40
….and a bridge.
André
20th April 2025, 17:06
You can choose to dismiss it as just a story and avoid confronting the implications of it being true. What I shared was a genuine experience. And that kind of thing happens all the time to many people. Nothing new.
Ferdi
20th April 2025, 9:13
I agree he should have done that. Especially with the regulatory change upcoming after 2021. The chances were pretty high some other team(s) would get it right from 2022 onwards and the 8 years dominance streak of Mercedes would end. But I think somewhere between 2014-2021 he somehow started to believe it was really him that won all those titles. Don’t get me wrong, I think he is one of the better drivers in Motorsport, but realistically speaking more on a 2 or 3 WDC level than on 7. You would expect that, having been along for so long, that a little more perspective toward himself had developed.
Edvaldo
20th April 2025, 15:57
Dude, nobody, and i mean NOBODY wins so much if not for exceptional circumstances.
This goes for Hamilton, Schumacher, Max, and Vettel as well. What do they have in common? They all drove and won in some of the best cars ever.
But if they didn’t sabotage their career by being a diva, venting on the radio with problematic messages, or throwing their team under the bus for their individual interests, that’s their merit. They put their head down and worked for it.
Vettel is another driver for whom 4 titles are way too many, 2 would be fairer, but he worked to be in the situation to win all those championships.
Then there’s Alonso, every bit as good as any of them, but with a fraction of their accomplishments because he’s a difficult and temperamental guy to work with. That’s his fault, it’s not the others that cheated by having better deals than him, they were smarter and had a way better view on the long term.
BLS (@brightlampshade)
19th April 2025, 21:47
It’s still very early into his Ferrari career, but I can’t see him getting the measure of Leclerc this season. Who knows what 2026 brings, the new cars may suit him more. It would be a shame for his career to end by simply making up the numbers for a couple of seasons.
I know 2021 is always mentioned but he’s had strong performances since. 2023 was a pretty good year, with even last season having strong spells. He’s not what he was though and I’m not sure he ever will be again unfortunately.
Scottie (@scottie)
19th April 2025, 23:13
It seems that Lewis is Daniel Ricciardo all over again.
A perfectly capable driver needing a fresh challenge and finding the value of a car suited to your style.
André
20th April 2025, 0:28
It’s been an interesting albeit sad phenomenon to watch what’s happening to him, especially given that he was one of the all-time best qualifiers in this sport. He knows that the performance is not good but somehow he’s not finding out how to solve it. Always this lack of confidence with the car, which I guess can only be related to how these ground effect cars feel to him as the limits are approached. I wonder if the younger drivers raised on Sim Racing end up developing the advantage of not relying as much on their body’s feedback to drive fast. Or maybe now we see the impact of his life outside of the sport and all the energy spent outside of racing.
Ferdi
20th April 2025, 9:15
It’s the car. He needs the car to edge the field. Vettelesque if you like.
PlosslF1 (@f1-ploss)
20th April 2025, 3:04
Reading the Hamilton obituaries is the most entertaining part of a race weekend… Then when he wins a race its all…yeah.. but :)
Armchair Expert (@armchairexpert)
20th April 2025, 6:08
Sir Lewis Hamilton can’t be slower that his team mate! Surely he’s using some experimental set-ups?
oweng (@oweng)
20th April 2025, 7:30
He might not be at the peak of his powers but are people forgetting he won the sprint race last month by a pretty big margin?
It’s probably a bit early to throw him on the scrap heap, as eager as some people might be to do so.
Ferdi
20th April 2025, 9:30
I agree if the car improves he will be up there again. Although Charles will be right with him. I agree we don’t have send him to the scrap heap yet.
He has become the victim of his former adoration, since these people have unrealistic expectations of him.
I feel it is way better to tune down the expectations of him created by his fans advocating he would would be the goat. That is just setting false expectation based on little insight into this sport. If you track the sport for decades you must be able to distinguish car and driver. If you can, you know Lewis is a WDC driver and at a level of 2 to maybe 3 titles. So I feel we should judge him vs that and not vs this strange statistic situation that unfolded by a combination of a car dominating an entire regulatory period and having ‘Valtteri, it’s James’ messaging. I understand his fans want to contribute it all to him but that is just not realistic.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
20th April 2025, 9:51
This is probably quite fair. Lewis winning seven titles was a combination of his abilities and the cars dominance. I cannot see him being champion again and I think expectations of this nature were very unrealistic.
RH
20th April 2025, 12:13
He was a very good driver and a worthy multi-WDC but I’d easily be able to argue that his 7 titles were more a product of the car and not the driver. It’s very easy to make an objective case for this than for most drivers in F1 history.
I’d say from his era alone, Alonso and Vettel both would be regarded just as successful had they driven the Merc instead of Lewis.
Success in this sport is mostly luck, and luck here is the car you drive.
Piastri might be in an Alpine and we all know how that might have ended.
oweng (@oweng)
20th April 2025, 13:25
There’s a reason certain drivers end up in the best cars and it’s not luck. It’s because they’re the best drivers.
Too easy to dismiss the dominant titles of Hamilton and Schumacher as being largely down to the car. It’s just not true. Only the very best have the mental strength to keep going relentlessly in pursuit of winning. How many win one title then fall away?
Edvaldo
20th April 2025, 16:27
There’s a reason average drivers never drive a dominant car. Want to know why? Because these cars wouldn’t be dominant in their hands.
Just like they could’ve won titles in his Mercedes, he could’ve won with their cars, or do you think Fisichella and Webber were huge challenges? Alonso won both his titles early in the year when he had the fastest car, then it was a matter of bringing it home as the 2nd fastest car with a good points gap do manage, whereas Vettel had the fastest car for all but a short stretch of time in 2012, so, as you can see, everybody can play this game.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
20th April 2025, 9:49
I repeat my comment from yesterday:
Lewis has always been one who can get quite down about his, or the cars performance quite quickly. But he’s not one to give up. He will keep trying. Maybe he has lost some of his edge over the years. Let’s face it, most drivers do.
He is always going to find it difficult up against Leclerc who is fast, younger and has been with the team much longer. I never thought he would be an instant success. Best he can hope for over the next couple of years is probably a few race wins. I don’t see him being WDC again but would love to be surprised.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
20th April 2025, 15:59
the problem with Ferrari, is they don’t know how to develop or setup a car.
Evidence :
Charles LeClerc doesn’t change his setup. He goes in, and races around, and tries to figure out how to keep his seat for next year, keeping all the rest of the guys happy. If he’s lucky the cars fast, if he’s not he just doesn’t achieve anything.
which is what his career at Ferrari has been, very inconsistent, no real title fight. Ferrari have an ‘engineering’ problem, most likely due to their politics, inside the factory. I have worked in a few factories, and know how engineers can be set in their ways, its not great.
The car isn’t half bad, certainly their effort in WEC should be lauded. But when its the small margin bits, it really is about the math, and the calculus/optimizations/rigor/etc…