Ferrari’s encouraging United States Grand Prix weekend unfortunately changed sharply at the decisive moment in Austin qualifying. After setting the pace in all three practice sessions, the Maranello team could manage only fourth with Charles Leclerc and fifth with Lewis Hamilton, while Kimi Antonelli claimed pole position ahead of Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar.
The sudden shift in the competitive order immediately caught Hamilton’s attention. After race engineer Carlo Santi informed him that he had finished fifth, the seven-time world champion suggested over team radio that Ferrari’s rivals appeared to have found additional engine performance for their final Q3 attempts, leaving him questioning where such a significant lap-time improvement had come from. His reaction reflected suspicion rather than certainty, however, as Hamilton could not establish whether the gain was actually related to power-unit settings or another factor.
Ferrari’s Austin qualifying advantage disappears in Q3
Until qualifying, Ferrari had been at the front throughout the weekend. Leclerc had led FP1 before again setting the benchmark in FP2, while Hamilton completed the clean sweep by going fastest in FP3. The progression had provided increasing encouragement after the team’s earlier Austin FP1 performance analysis and Leclerc’s subsequent FP2 benchmark for Ferrari.
In FP2, Leclerc recorded a 1:35.291. Antonelli was only 0.042 seconds behind the Ferrari driver, while Verstappen trailed by 0.189 seconds. The margins were therefore already small, but the Scuderia had nevertheless established itself at the top of the timesheets.
Hamilton then lowered the reference further in FP3 with a 1:34.893. Verstappen ended that session 0.168 seconds behind, while Leclerc was 0.234 seconds away from his team-mate. Ferrari had not produced an overwhelming advantage in either session, but leading all three practices created genuine reason for optimism before the fight for pole.
Antonelli finds the decisive step as Ferrari falls behind
The picture changed in Q3. Antonelli delivered a 1:34.035 to take pole, with Verstappen second on a 1:34.214 and Hadjar third with a 1:34.259. Leclerc followed in 1:34.267, just eight thousandths behind Hadjar, while Hamilton’s 1:34.311 left him fifth. George Russell completed the top six and will therefore start immediately behind the two Ferraris.
Hamilton still improved substantially compared with his own FP3 benchmark, finding 0.582 seconds between the two sessions. Antonelli’s progression was even larger, with the Mercedes driver gaining more than one second relative to his earlier practice performance. Those figures help explain Hamilton’s surprise, although direct comparisons between practice and qualifying remain only indicative because track conditions, tyre behaviour and run strategies were not identical.
The qualifying differences and how the drivers performed across the decisive session can also be explored through the F1 qualifying pace and sector comparison.
Why Ferrari could not reproduce its practice performance
The central question for Ferrari is therefore not whether the car had pace at the Circuit of the Americas, but why that potential was not converted into a stronger Q3 result. Charles Leclerc’s post-session assessment only added to the discussion after a weekend in which Ferrari had been quickest every time the cars ran before qualifying. Falling temperatures and tyre management may have contributed to the change in relative performance.
There is also the possibility that Mercedes and Red Bull simply extracted more from their cars when the decisive laps arrived, whether through engine settings or other performance factors. That interpretation would fit the striking progression visible in the lap times, but Hamilton’s radio suspicion should not be treated as evidence of a particular qualifying engine mode or a deliberate decision by Ferrari’s rivals to hold performance back earlier in the weekend.
What is clear is that Ferrari did not suddenly lose all the potential demonstrated during practice. Instead, the Scuderia was unable to express enough of that performance on the final Q3 attempts, while Antonelli and Verstappen produced more effective laps and Hadjar also managed to place himself ahead of both red cars.
Ferrari will consequently begin the United States Grand Prix from fourth and fifth rather than from the front of the grid that its practice results had suggested might be possible. Hamilton’s radio reaction captured the frustration and uncertainty surrounding that reversal, turning the gap between Ferrari’s practice form and its qualifying result into one of the major questions emerging from Saturday in Austin.
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