Lewis Hamilton's brutally honest analysis: "Eight tenths is a huge gap"

Lewis Hamilton’s brutally honest analysis: “Eight tenths is a huge gap” | Austin Sprint Qualifying. Lewis Hamilton was brutally honest after Sprint Qualifying in Austin.

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari SF-25, tire, garage, 2025 F1

Lewis Hamilton will start from the fourth row in tomorrow’s Sprint race at the Circuit of the Americas. The eight-tenths gap he suffered in Sprint Qualifying weighed more heavily than any statistic. Ferrari’s SF-25, now in the final stretch of a challenging season, has little left to offer in terms of performance development, with the upgrade program having been stopped earlier than that of its rivals. Yet, moments like this one clearly reveal how difficult 2025 has already become for the Maranello team. The eighth and tenth positions achieved in Austin perfectly reflect the struggles that continue to define Ferrari’s season finale.

The Texan circuit is among the trickiest of the entire Formula 1 calendar — not only because of the extreme bumps that constantly challenge the car’s ride height, a long-standing peculiarity of the track, but also because of its layout. Austin’s Circuit of the Americas is a circuit built on compromise: corners of very different characteristics follow one another relentlessly, making it extremely hard to find the ideal balance, both in the setup and in tyre management. It is no secret that in qualifying trim, Ferrari’s SF-25 has often struggled to extract the maximum potential from the tyres.

The most critical moment continues to be the transition between the penultimate and final qualifying sessions, where Ferrari is often the top team losing the most ground. However, in Austin, the issues extended beyond the soft compound; they also affected the medium tyres, as seen during the first and second segments of Sprint Qualifying. Both Ferrari drivers risked elimination in SQ2 and SQ3, with Hamilton narrowly escaping by just six thousandths of a second over Andrea Kimi Antonelli in the second session. In the end, the British driver secured eighth place on the grid but with a deficit of almost nine tenths to the front — a gap that weighs heavily on Ferrari’s goals and morale.

The Scuderia remains in contention for second place in the Constructors’ Championship, but with Red Bull returning to top form thanks to Max Verstappen and Mercedes showing consistent top-five pace, the risk of losing valuable points is becoming more and more real. Ferrari’s hopes now rest on the reopening of parc fermé after the Sprint and on the high track temperatures expected in Texas, which could offer a small advantage in tyre management for the race.

Lewis Hamilton, for his part, kept his words brief but precise, offering a clear and brutally honest assessment of the gap to the top after finishing eighth, nearly nine tenths down on pole-sitter Max Verstappen. “It’s not the pace we were expecting,” said the British driver. “In Q1 it felt pretty good, but then we started to lose performance, and the car became really difficult to drive. Eight tenths is a huge gap.”

There was little more to add — and equally difficult to imagine that much will change in the performance of the SF-25 between now and the end of the season. For Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton, the closing races of 2025 look set to be an uphill battle, with hopes pinned on maximizing every possible opportunity.