Lewis Hamilton had a difficult start to his weekend in Jeddah, finishing only 13th in Friday’s practice sessions. Clearly frustrated, the seven-time world champion admitted that things didn’t go as planned.
“It wasn’t the best,” Hamilton said after the session. “I think the problem was that I wasn’t able to get the tyres up to the right temperature.”
The Ferrari driver was over six-tenths of a second slower than his teammate, Charles Leclerc, and expressed concerns that he might fall further behind in qualifying.
“Saturday is usually when things can go downhill, but here, I don’t have much room to fall back any further, given where I am now,” Hamilton said in an interview with the official F1 channel. “I hope we can make some improvements overnight.”
While Hamilton acknowledged a few positive moments during the session, his struggles were evident when running on the soft tyres. “We’ll change a few things overnight and hope to be stronger tomorrow,” he added.
Throughout both sessions, the team tested various setups on both cars, aiming to find better balance and performance. “We’ve been experimenting with different wing settings and other small details,” Hamilton said. “I’m hopeful that after tonight’s analysis, we’ll have a clearer idea of where we stand and can improve for tomorrow.”
Despite Leclerc’s strong performance in Bahrain, where he qualified in the front row, Hamilton remains focused on the immediate task ahead. “For now, I’m just trying to see if I can even make it into the top 10,” he admitted.
On the other hand, Leclerc was more optimistic about Ferrari’s performance and remains hopeful of challenging McLaren in qualifying.
“We made a lot of changes to the car, and it was a very positive day because I learned a lot,” Leclerc said. “I think if we get everything right, we can extract a little more performance from the car.”
“McLaren still looks really strong, and they’re ahead of us, but never say never — if we get everything right, I think anything is possible,” he added. “We’ve done a good job testing different options, and I now have a clear idea of what I want to do tomorrow. We’ll go in that direction and hope it pays off when qualifying comes.”
