Lewis Hamilton said he doesn’t feel like he’s getting more comfortable in his Ferrari as he was unhappy with his qualifying performance again in Jeddah.
The Ferrari driver made the cut for Q3 by just seven thousandths of a second. From there he set a time good enough for seventh on the grid, but was out-qualified by the Williams of former Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz Jnr.
“The lap was bad,” Hamilton told Viaplay after qualifying.
However he said the session as a whole had been “better than I anticipated” after practice.
“Obviously, I’d been 13th all weekend, so to find myself getting into Q3 was a positive for me. Still, the last lap was pretty bad.
“Every time I get to Q3 all the hard work kind of disappears. But anyway, P7 is better than nothing, so I’ll try and do something from there tomorrow.”
Hamilton struggled for pace in the hotter conditions of final practice. “I couldn’t get that last tyre to work,” he told his race engineer Ricardo Adami at the end of the session. “It was a good improvement, though, we are getting there,” Adami replied.
However speaking after qualifying Hamilton said he doesn’t feel comfortable in the car yet: “No, simple as [that], I don’t feel that.”
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Asked what he needs to get to grips with the SF-25 he replied: “A brain transplant.”
In qualifying Hamilton lapped 0.531 seconds slower than his team mate Charles Leclerc, who will start from fourth on the grid.
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur expects the team will be more competitive in race trim than they were in qualifying.
“P4 is not that bad, P7 is a bit more difficult, but overall it’s not a matter of position,” he told the official F1 channel. “For me it’s more a matter of pace.
“We struggled from the beginning in turn one. Compared to Max [Verstappen], I think we are losing two tenths and a half in turn one and three tenths over the lap. It means that we really need to find a solution for this turn one.
“I think in the race it will be a different story when the temperature in the tyres has stabilised, but it’s true that from the beginning it’s tough for us.”
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