Lewis Hamilton proclaimed that he is “devastated” and “gutted” after the two Ferrari drivers qualified outside the top 10 for the Formula 1 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.
Ferrari’s wretched start to the campaign reached a new low on home soil at Imola as Hamilton and team-mate Charles Leclerc were eliminated in the second session.
Both Hamilton and Leclerc became vulnerable in Q2 without an improvement on their second runs, and quicker lap times elsewhere consigned them to the drop zone.
Hamilton, who also endured a premature exit at the previous round in Miami, admitted that Ferrari’s torrid result exposed the pace limitation of the SF-25 over one lap.
“Yeah, I definitely feel devastated,” Hamilton told media including Motorsport Week. “I feel gutted, I guess, because the car was generally feeling okay.
“The set-up was just right, the brakes were working, everything was kind of in place – you just can’t go quicker.
“You look at how quick Max [Verstappen] is going through Turn 2 and 3, we just can’t match it.
“Then we’ve got that new Soft on at the end, and for some reason it just didn’t come alive, there was no extra grip.”
Hamilton explained that not advancing to the top-10 shootout came as a complete surprise as the car’s handling had been improving up until the change to new tyres.
“I really thought we were going to be getting through, the car was alive,” the Briton continued.
“Watching these guys doing 14.7s, I mean, we could just get to 15.7s, it’s a lot of time.”
Ferrari reliant on upgrades to 2025 car
Hamilton, who has now qualified behind Leclerc six times in seven races, expressed that Ferrari is reliant on upgrades to close the vast gap to the team’s competitors.
“I think we’ve made progress this weekend,” he said. “A little bit that I was talking about before, it’s still not where it needs to be. There’s performance in that.
“We need more upgrades. We’re not at the level we need to be.
“[McLaren] were doing 6-10k faster in Turn 2, but we can’t match that. We’ve just got to keep pushing the car, applying pressure, and hopefully the guys can find something.”
Hamilton expecting limited recovery
Hamilton, who labelled the support he has seen on his debut home race with Ferrari as “magical”, warned progress will be tough with overtaking limited around Imola.
“This is not a great circuit to race on,” he highlighted. “It’s great to drive a single lap, but overtaking, in the DRS train, there’s not going to be a lot of movement tomorrow.
“But we are all on softer tyres, so we’ll see what we can do. We’ll try and pick them off again. I feel like race pace could be good, our race pace was decent this time.”
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