Ferrari are experiencing their worst race weekend of the season so far at the Qatar Grand Prix, and Charles Leclerc has agreed with Lewis Hamilton’s assessment regarding the state of the Scuderia’s Formula 1 car.
As Oscar Piastri has seemingly turned around his woes from recent months with a perfect weekend so far in Lusail, Ferrari’s hole appears to get deeper and deeper with every passing session.
The weekend started with Fred Vasseur making excuses for Ferrari’s regression in 2025, but their results so far will be tough to overlook from the perspective of John Elkann.
Lewis Hamilton exited qualifying in the first session of the shootout yet again, and despite Charles Leclerc’s ability to clinch a spot in Q3, he was unable to set a time fast enough for any other spot than P10 on the grid for the Qatar Grand Prix.
Charles Leclerc agrees with Lewis Hamilton’s assessment of the F1-25 in qualifying for the Qatar Grand Prix
After failing to get out of the first qualifying session for the third successive time across both race formats, Hamilton was surprisingly upbeat with his verdict in the media pen.
The seven-time world champion told Sky Sports F1, “The car felt a lot better, it just didn’t reflect that in the times.
“The car felt good. Honestly, the car felt a lot better than it had the rest of the weekend. We were looking okay, and then we just didn’t get the last lap.”
After securing the final spot on the grid of the drivers who made it through to Q3, Leclerc was asked about the problems he was dealing with from the Sprint race to qualifying for the Grand Prix.
The Monegasque said, “There’s a bit of everything, unfortunately. There’s mid-corner understeer, there’s oversteer on entry and exit.
“It’s been an unbelievably difficult race weekend just to drive and keep the car on track. It’s frustrating to see that even with maximum risk, a good lap is still bringing us P10 and nothing better.”
He was then made aware of his Ferrari counterpart’s comments, to which he said, “I agree with Lewis’ feelings.
“The car feels quite okay, it doesn’t feel that much off the pace, but when you look at the timings, we are very, very, very far.
“It’s just the performance of the car at the moment; we are not where we want to be. I changed quite a bit on the car since yesterday, but I couldn’t extract any more.”
.webp)
Damon Hill reacts to Charles Leclerc’s spin in Q2 at the Qatar Grand Prix
The balance of Ferrari’s SF-25 is so bad this weekend in Lusail that even Pierre Gasly told Hamilton how terrible it looked in race trim after the Sprint race earlier in the day.
The battle that both of Ferrari’s drivers have to contend with was evident through Leclerc’s spin during the opening laps of Q2.
Understeer, paired with oversteer, sent the Monegasque into a double pirouette as he tried to get his first flying lap in. Leclerc was lucky to find himself and his Ferrari F1 car unscathed in the incident.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), former F1 driver Damon Hill reacted to the spin, posting, “I was thinking that Ferrari looked scary. Then it spun. Lucky he didn’t break his neck, it went round so fast!”
Luckily, the Ferrari star was able to make his way back around the circuit to give it another go and was able to set a time fast enough to earn a spot in the top 10 shootout.