Seven time World Champion Lewis Hamilton labeled his SF-25 as being on a "knife edge" at the qualifying session for the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix on Saturday.
Hamilton converted a pole position into his, and his teams' very first Sprint victory during Saturdays' China Sprint race. Hamilton managed to fend off multiple attacks from Red Bull and Max Verstappen, the latter eventually being unable to mount any more challenges due to harsh tyre degradation.
Following a statement victory at the Sprint however, Ferrari and Hamiltons' pace appeared to evaporate during qualifying, as the both Hamilton and teammate Charles Leclerc did not seem to have any real form of competitive edge in their car. This lack of true pace meant that Hamilton could only muster a fifth place finish, with Leclerc behind in sixth ahead of Sundays' race.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the session, the Briton said: "We started really optimistic, naturally, but then we made just a couple of small changes, tweaks to the car, and it really put the car on a knife edge. I think the wind picked up a little bit as well, so the car was trickier to drive, and it was harder to put laps together."
"You want a car that's balanced, so at the moment from one corner to the next, the car has a different balance. You want a car that has similar balance everywhere."
"As I said, we made the change, and then all of a sudden the high speed was over-balanced," Hamilton continued. "You just want a car you can rely on, when you attack the corners, you know it's going to stay with you instead of lock up and go on or snap into oversteer. When it's unpredictable, then you've got no hope," the seven time World Champion concluded.
Leclerc, who was slower than teammate Hamilton during the session, shared his thoughts on a sub-par weekend on his end: "Lewis did still a better job than I did, but I felt like I maximised on my side. I don't think there was anything more. Being in front of Lewis or being behind, that doesn't really matter, because as a team we start next to each other."
"As a team, I think we maximised the potential of the car," Leclerc continued. "But the most important thing is that we understand where the potential of the car has gone because from this morning, or from Sprint qualifying, we were much faster compared to the others."
"I think yesterday maybe Lando [Norris] would have been a step ahead if he had finished his lap, but with other people we were more or less in line. Today, even though it's tight, we seem to be a bit more on the back foot, because I think both laps, Lewis' and mine, weren't that bad, it was pretty good. It's the way it is," the Monegasque driver concluded.
Not the optimistic words that the Tifosi will be pleased to hear, after what was a dominant drive from Hamilton to claim the Sprint victory only hours prior. However, Ferrari will be sure to give it everything they can, in a bid to ensure a good points haul after the race and to deliver a better result than they could manage at last weekends' Australian Grand Prix.
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