Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were left with differing views after Sprint Qualifying at the Shanghai International Circuit – the former feeling “really pleased” and the latter left to rue issues on his final timed lap.
Hamilton’s SQ3 effort put him fourth on the grid for the Sprint, between McLaren pair Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, while Charles Leclerc had to settle for sixth, some three-and-a-half tenths down on his team mate.
Reflecting on his team-leading result, following a difficult practice hour, Hamilton said: “Really pleased with the session. My team did a really great job, my engineers did a fantastic job to turn the car around, because in P1 it was a tricky session with that spin.
“The car generally felt great, it’s just I think we’re losing… I think it’s on the straights, it’s a lot of time to be losing. We have a lot of work to do, we really have to push so hard back [at the factory] in Maranello to improve on power.
“It’s something that I think we were conscious of last year, we thought that Mercedes started [on the new regulations] earlier than us, or the rest, which they did last time as well. They’ve done a fantastic job, and we’ve got to step up, we’ve got to push to be able to close that gap.
“I think car-wise, the car feels great, and I think we can compete with them through corners, but when you’re down on power it’s just the way it is.”
Hamilton was also asked about Ferrari trialling their ‘flip-flop’ rear wing in FP1, before going back to the specification used for the season-opener in Australia.
“I don’t really know why we went back on it,” he commented. “We rushed it to get it here, and it was not supposed to be on the car until it was like race four or five, something like that.
“They did a great job to rush it here, we only had two of them, and it was maybe a little bit premature, so we took it off. The car was still great and we’ll work to try and bring it back when it’s ready.”
Leclerc, meanwhile, gave his take on a “frustrating session”, having set the third-fastest time in SQ2 before dropping to sixth in the decisive SQ3 phase.
“First the toggle, then unfortunately when I had a good lap, I lost half a second in the back straight for whatever reason – on the second lap in SQ3,” he said. “We’ll analyse that and try to understand what’s gone wrong.”
Adding his thoughts on Ferrari’s wing changes, and the deficit to pace-setters Mercedes, Leclerc added: “I mean, it doesn’t really change the picture from where we are. I think in the race we should be relatively a bit stronger than where we were now in [Sprint] Qualifying, however Mercedes seems to be still a step ahead.
“In Qualifying, for some reason the Mercedes power unit finds a lot of lap time. We don’t quite find that amount of lap time just yet in Qualifying, but in the race we are closer, so I’m still hopeful we can come back tomorrow.”
