The excitement from Lewis Hamilton’s first podium with Ferrari in China seems to have already faded. The GP of China feels far away—not just geographically, but emotionally. The victory over Charles Leclerc and his first career podium for the Scuderia now feel like distant memories for the seven-time world champion. Saturday’s qualifying session for the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka was, overall, disappointing for the English driver. Hamilton could not go beyond sixth on the grid, which given the current balance of power, is arguably the minimum expectation for drivers of the three top teams: Mercedes, McLaren, and Ferrari.
The silver arrows remain untouchable for everyone, but Lewis Hamilton was also beaten by his teammate Charles Leclerc and the two McLarens of Oscar Piastri, who qualified third, and Lando Norris, who claimed fifth and will start alongside him on the grid tomorrow. The gap to the top was particularly severe: a full eight-tenths behind pole-sitter Kimi Antonelli in the Mercedes.
Huge gap to recover
Interviewed by Sky Sport F1 at the end of Q3, Lewis Hamilton allowed himself a brief but candid venting session. Polite in tone yet firm in content, his comments seemed to reopen some wounds from last year that appeared to have healed. The British veteran clearly pointed out shortcomings not just in Ferrari’s power unit—which is less competitive than Mercedes’—but in the SF-26 as a whole.
“You can’t put all the blame on the engine,” Lewis Hamilton stated at the end of the qualifying session for the Japanese Grand Prix – “Certainly, the way power is delivered accounts for a large part of the time. But they [Mercedes] are also very fast in the first sector, which means our performance is below theirs even in terms of the car itself. So we need to recover a huge gap if we want to compete.”
Comments like these likely didn’t bring much cheer to the Maranello garage, highlighting that Ferrari still has significant work to do to close the gap to their rivals, both in terms of engine performance and the overall balance of the SF-26 chassis.
