Lewis Hamilton ‘devastated’ after Ferrari ho…read more
Lewis Hamilton cut a disconsolate figure on Saturday evening at Imola after a qualifying session that saw both Ferraris fall at the Q2 hurdle—an outcome that felt particularly painful given the weight of expectation surrounding his first Italian Grand Prix as a Scuderia driver.
The seven-time world champion had arrived at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari buoyed by encouraging long-run data from the simulator and a raft of minor chassis and brake tweaks that appeared, on Friday at least, to have settled many of the SF25’s lingering handling complaints. Yet when the decisive moment came, the red cars simply could not unlock the grip that their rivals found on fresh soft tyres. Charles Leclerc wound up 11th; Hamilton slotted in directly behind him in 12th, both missing the cut for Q3 by mere hundredths of a second.
“I’m honestly devastated—just gutted,” Hamilton admitted in the post-session media pen. He explained that the car had felt “progressively better” through each practice run: brake temperatures were under control, the front-axle bounce that plagued the last two rounds had largely vanished, and balance shifts through Rivazza were finally predictable. “But as soon as we bolted on the new set for that final push, the grip just wasn’t there. You could see everyone else lighting up the timing screens and we had nothing more to give. We have to understand why the tyre never switched on for us.”
The disappointment was amplified by the setting. Hamilton had spoken all week about the emotional resonance of racing in Ferrari red before a packed Italian crowd, calling it “a childhood dream realised.” He confessed that watching the mechanics—many of whom have spent sleepless nights in Maranello hustling to extract performance—pack up early for parc fermé was “bittersweet in the extreme.”
Leclerc’s assessment was equally blunt. The Monegasque, who has carried Ferrari hopes since 2019, said the team was “P-nowhere at the moment” and at a loss to explain why modest aero updates failed to deliver the predicted downforce gains. Both drivers cited Friday brake worries—high pedal travel and inconsistent bite—but insisted those issues were largely fixed by Saturday morning, leaving raw pace, not reliability, as the glaring deficit.
Adding salt to the wound, midfield contenders stole the limelight. Williams, whose slippery FW47 had already embarrassed several front-runners around Miami’s low-drag layout a fortnight ago, repeated the feat at Imola’s more technical circuit, placing both cars inside the top ten. Aston Martin, meanwhile, debuted its first substantial upgrade package of the 2025 season and was rewarded with a Q3 berth for each driver—the team’s best qualifying since Shanghai in March.
Within Ferrari, attention now pivots to race-day damage limitation. Imola’s narrow confines and old-school gravel traps make overtaking notoriously tricky, but strategists are banking on higher-than-average tyre degradation on a hot Sunday to open under-cut and over-cut windows. Hamilton, ever the optimist despite visible frustration, promised to “fight like hell” for points and to give the Tifosi “something to cheer, even if it’s not the result we all wanted.”
Still, the symbolism of being shaded by traditional midfield operations on home soil cannot be ignored. In a season billed as a renaissance—new driver line-up, revamped technical leadership, and incremental upgrades arriving almost every race—Ferrari now faces searching questions about development direction and correlation between wind-tunnel numbers and on-track speed.
For Hamilton, whose move from Mercedes was as much about rekindling competitive fire as about legacy, Saturday’s setback is a reminder that fairy-tale narratives require hard engineering reality to cooperate. As the red grandstands roar on Sunday, he will hope that strategy gambles, race-craft, and perhaps a timely Safety Car can transform devastation into redemption—if not for victory, then at least for a spirited climb into the points.
