{"id":18960,"date":"2025-04-14T10:30:13","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T10:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/18960\/"},"modified":"2025-04-14T10:30:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T10:30:13","slug":"hamilton-doesnt-have-a-lot-of-answers-to-bahrain-gp-qualifying-deficit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/18960\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton doesn\u2019t \u201chave a lot of answers\u201d to Bahrain GP qualifying deficit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lewis Hamilton<\/a> cut a hangdog figure after qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix \u2013 possibly the most downcast he has looked since qualifying nearly half a second off George Russell<\/a>, then his team-mate, in Qatar last year.<\/p>\n

In Bahrain Hamilton toiled to ninth on the grid, 0.931s slower than Oscar Piastri<\/a>\u2019s pole position time and nearly six tenths adrift of his Ferrari<\/a> team-mate Charles Leclerc<\/a>, who initially qualified third before Russell\u2019s penalty promoted him to second<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty straightforward \u2013 not much to say,\u201d he told reporters post-qualifying. \u201cI\u2019m just not doing a good enough job on my side so I\u2019ve just got to keep improving \u2013 I\u2019m working on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamilton had outpaced Leclerc in Q1 with a lap set just before the chequered flag, but in Q2 the order was reversed as Hamilton failed to improve on his first push lap and Leclerc\u2019s second flier was 0.285s faster.<\/p>\n

It was in Q3 where the margin really opened up. Hamilton lost his first flying lap to a track-limits infringement after his Ferrari washed wide over the exit kerbs at Turn 13.<\/p>\n

While his second and final push lap of 1m30.772s was initially good for fifth, he was subsequently leapfrogged by Leclerc, Pierre Gasly<\/a>, Max Verstappen<\/a> and Carlos Sainz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly the car is a lot better than I\u2019m delivering with it,\u201d he told F1TV. \u201cAnd Charles did a great job with it today, so big apologies to the team for not doing the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lewis <\/p>\n

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari<\/p>\n

Photo by: Fadel Senna – AFP – Getty Images<\/p>\n

In Japan last weekend Hamilton set tongues wagging by suggesting his car had a \u201cdeficit\u201d to his team-mate\u2019s and that \u201con my side, something is not performing\u201d. He was not specific about what this was, though the belief is that he was alluding to his preference to run his cars lower and stiffer than the SF-25 could go.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s understood this issue has been militated by Ferrari\u2019s major floor upgrade this weekend, which included a new \u2018throat\u2019 profile as well as revised end fences. Hamilton has certainly ceased suggesting that car rather than driver is to blame.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Leclerc seems to be able to extract more performance from the SF-25, gravitating towards a set-up which requires a specific driving style but which delivers rewards.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve gone into a quite extreme direction in the past few weekends in terms of setup,\u201d said Leclerc after qualifying.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt fits my driving style but also makes it quite \u2013 well, very tricky to drive. But it seems that I\u2019m able to extract a bit more out of the car going in that direction so I\u2019ll keep going.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

\u201cRace after race it seems to be better and better so that\u2019s a positive sign for the future. But it makes it very difficult at some parts of qualifying \u2013 especially on used tyres it was just all over the place. It was very difficult to put everything together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The challenge for Hamilton now is that the team\u2019s priorities will naturally coalesce around the driver who is getting the most performance out of the car as it is, since development must soon pivot towards the 2026 project. He needs to feel his way towards a means of making the SF-25 work for him – even he seems unsure of how to do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really don\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t have a lot of answers for you guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

Stuart Codling\n<\/p>\n

Formula 1\n<\/p>\n

Lewis Hamilton\n<\/p>\n

Ferrari\n<\/p>\n

Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton cut a hangdog figure after qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix \u2013 possibly the most downcast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4293,4202,4199,997,707,4200,998,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-18960","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-bahrain-gp","9":"tag-bahrain-international-circuit","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-ferrari","12":"tag-formula-1","13":"tag-formula1","14":"tag-lewis-hamilton","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114335856930381139","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}