Lewis Hamilton’s first appearance for the Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 team in front of an Italian crowd was always going to be special, and which makes a below par performance for the home outfit at Imola even more painful.
Hamilton could manage only 12th in Q2, and it was of little comfort that his team mate Charles Leclerc was only one place and just 0.161s ahead.
The double frustration for Hamilton was that for once he felt comfortable in the car – the speed just simply wasn’t there.
After qualifying he called for more updates for the SF-25, while also stressing that for him that this is a “foundation building” year ahead of 2026.
He said, “I definitely feel devastated, I feel just gutted I guess, because the car was generally feeling really good. I honestly felt like the setup was just right, the brakes were working, everything was kind of in place, and we just can’t go quicker.”
“If you look how quick Max is going through Turn 2 and 3, we just can’t match it. And when we put that new soft on at the end, for some reason, it just didn’t come alive. There was no extra grip,” hamilton added.
