Hamilton praises Ferrari for achieving an “encouraging step forward”
On the back of his best qualifying performance since the Austrian Grand Prix, Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton revealed that he struggles to pinpoint the exact area in which the Scuderia loses performance compared to the utterly dominant McLaren.
Ferrari has endured a tough weekend so far at Zandvoort. The Scuderia struggled for overall grip on a track that exposes its SF25’s weaknesses.
Despite some promising runs on Pirelli’s medium tyres in the third and final practice, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were on the verge of getting knocked out in Q1. The Briton and Monegasque then got their act together and salvaged Ferrari’s day with a sixth and seventh qualifying position.
Having been only 50 thousands slower than Leclerc in Q3, Hamilton branded his qualifying performance as an “encouraging step forward.”
"Today was a challenging one in terms of getting the car fully into the right performance window. We showed promising pace on the medium tyre in FP3, but weren’t able to fully translate that into qualifying, and there’s still work to do compared to the teams ahead.
“That said, after the summer break our priority was to keep building, and today was an encouraging step forward. This circuit is always difficult when it comes to overtaking, so if the weather does bring some mixed conditions tomorrow, hopefully it will create opportunities and make the race exciting for the fans."
Pressed on to reveal where Ferrari have been losing time compared to their rivals, Hamilton replied: “The biggest limit for us, I think, is a combination of things. But ultimately, we need more load to go through the corners as fast as McLaren here, for some reason.
“Now, is that load or is that coming from the tyres? It's difficult to know. Maybe they get into the tyres in a different operating window to us, potentially. Or it's a combination of both. Ultimately, I think McLaren definitely have more downforce than everybody. But they're not very draggy.
“If we were to try and match them, we'd have to go up a couple of levels of wing, but have the efficiency of a lower wing and then it's just a combination of getting the car to be more stable through a corner.
“I think the wind makes it really tricky. So you've got tailwinds into one and crosswinds in lots of different places. I think this car is to be quite sensitive to wind.”
