Lewis Hamilton has admitted that his Ferrari car became “worse” with the changes that Ferrari made to the SF-25 during the Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix weekend.
Having taken his maiden win with the Italian marque in Saturday’s Sprint race, the Briton appeared poised for a strong weekend at the Shanghai International Circuit.
However, the Maranello-based squad was unable to maintain that promise as Hamilton qualified on the third row, one position above new team-mate Charles Leclerc.
Hamilton harboured hopes that the race could deliver a positive turnaround, though, and he managed to make up one place at the start on Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
But Hamilton was unable to match the pace ahead, culminating in a switch with Leclerc, who had been pressuring his team-mate despite losing a front wing endplate.
With Verstappen closing in, Hamilton pitted and finished sixth, but he was later disqualified as the thickness of his plank was below the permitted minimum threshold.
Prior to that revelation, the seven-time F1 champion divulged the team made revisions to his car after the Sprint which had a negative impact on his competitiveness.
“I’m glad that we tried something,” he said. “I was struggling with performance.
“Ultimately, we had a pretty decent car in the Sprint and then we made some changes because we tried to move forward and improve the car and we made it quite a bit worse basically.
“We got into qualifying and then it was even worse in the race.
“So [it was] unfortunate, but very, very hard to keep up with the guys ahead. But lots to learn.”
Hamilton admits Ferrari’s strategy call ‘wasn’t great’
After the first round of pit stops, Hamilton managed to hold his position over Leclerc before the team orders came into effect.
The former Mercedes driver suggested the swap to his team before telling his race engineer that he would make the call on where to execute the move on track.
As Verstappen closed in on Hamilton, Ferrari opted to bring him into the pits for another set of hard tyres.
Ultimately, he was unable to recover any positions, as he mentioned that reclaiming his position from the Red Bull driver proved to be too much of a challenge.
“The pit stop is too long here,” he added.
“It’s a lot of seconds to catch up and they were still going fast at the end.
“Like Max was doing something similar to me and I had much fresher tyres. So, yeah, it wasn’t great.”
F1 heads to Japan in two weeks’ time for the Japanese Grand Prix, where Hamilton has been victorious five times at the Suzuka Circuit.
Still yet to secure a top-five finish for his new team on a Sunday, Hamilton will look to bounce back at a track Ferrari hasn’t won at since 2004.
READ MORE – Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton disqualified from F1 Chinese GP
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