Lewis Hamilton did not hide his confusion after seeing the behavior of his Ferrari radically change between free practice and sprint qualifying at Zandvoort.
Lewis Hamilton expected to play a leading role after encouraging free practice sessions at the Dutch Grand Prix. But a few hours later, the seven-time world champion was disappointed during the sprint qualifying, unable to regain the feelings he had behind the wheel of his Ferrari earlier in the day.
Fourth in the only free practice session and ahead of his teammate Charles Leclerc, Hamilton had started his weekend on a good footing. The situation completely reversed during the Sprint Shootout.
The Briton ultimately had to settle for seventh place, behind Leclerc and more than half a second off the benchmark set by George Russell.
Hamilton no longer recognized his Ferrari
More than the raw result, it is especially the radical change in the behavior of the SF-26 that leaves Hamilton perplexed. Ferrari had only made a few relatively minor adjustments after free practice.
“Unfortunately, it was not a good session, that’s how it is,” admits Hamilton.
“FP1 went well. We made some subtle adjustments to the car, but when we got to qualifying, it was a completely different car.”
A particularly frustrating development given the good feelings experienced a few hours earlier. Ferrari now needs to understand why such limited changes had such a significant impact on the behavior of the car.
“We need to understand what went wrong and we will do our best tomorrow.”
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Ferrari must now analyze the data
Hamilton believes he has some leads to turn the situation around. Asked about his ability to identify the areas where Ferrari can improve before the Grand Prix qualifying, he appeared relatively confident.
“Yes, I think so. We will look at the data and then make a decision,” he explains.
“But we just need to review the data and understand what happened.”
The Briton can also rely on the information collected by Charles Leclerc. The Monegasque was running with slightly different settings and managed to maintain more performance during qualifying.
“Charles was in a slightly different setup from mine, a bit closer to what I had during FP1,” Hamilton specifies.
Limited changes before the sprint
However, Ferrari will have to deal with parc fermé constraints. Hamilton will not be able to make significant changes to his car before the end of Saturday’s sprint race.
The Briton will therefore have to try to limit the damage with his current setup before Ferrari can intervene more extensively on the SF-26 ahead of qualifying and the Grand Prix.
An even more important issue as Hamilton remains engaged in the championship fight. In this context, understanding why his Ferrari lost so much performance in just a few hours will be one of Scuderia’s priorities for the rest of the weekend.
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