Lewis Hamilton brushed off his chances of moving forward from a P7 grid slot in Saturday’s sprint race, replying “not really” when asked if he would be able to make progress from his starting position. The seven-time world champion was much closer to team-mate Charles Leclerc in Friday’s sprint shootout session than he was in Saudi Arabia two weeks ago, but Ferrari‘s lack of performance hamstrung both drivers as they were confined to P6 and P7 grid slots for the sprint race.
Hamilton is still searching for answers as he adapts to life with his new team. The legendary Brit is struggling to adjust to the ill-handling SF-25 after 12 seasons driving Mercedes machinery. However, while the sprint in Shanghai proved to be a breakthrough moment, Saturday’s stint in Miami is unlikely to follow the same trend.
Offering a general overview of his session, Hamilton said: “It was a better session. P1 was probably a bit better, the car was a bit better, the car was a bit nicer to drive. We are just lacking speed, but we just keep working from there.”
However, there wasn’t much optimism from the 40-year-old when asked if he could gain ground on Saturday. “Not really,” he replied. “I think all the cars ahead are faster. I don’t know what else to say.”
Quizzed about ideas to improve his car for the remainder of the weekend, he fired back: “There’s always ideas. Whether or not they will be right or not.. there’s definitely learnings to be taken – set-up changes, how the car behaved, there’s definitely work to do to pick up speed going into the rest of the weekend.”
Hamilton’s frustrations were echoed by team-mate Leclerc. The Monegasque racer didn’t mince his words when asked for a report of his sprint qualifying session. “Bad,” he explained. “The lap was good. But the pace is just not at all there for now, so it’s a bit annoying but it’s the way it is for now.
“I’ll try my best tomorrow to try to do something special with the start, but to be honest, there’s not much room for improvement today. It was just… that’s the pace of the car.
“It’s every corner, really, so it’s not like we are particularly weak in one type of corner. Yes, the slow speed seems to be a little bit more of our weakness, but it changes from one weekend to the other, so it’s just not great.”