04/05/2025
NEWS STORY
Mixed fortunes for Scuderia Ferrari HP today at the Miami Grand Prix.
Lewis Hamilton finished third in the Sprint in the morning, but the afternoon's qualifying saw both drivers struggle more than in yesterday's Sprint Qualifying. It meant that the best placed SF-25 on tomorrow's grid will be Charles Leclerc in eighth place. Hamilton did not go further than Q2 and will have to start from twelfth. The race starts tomorrow at 16 local (22 CEST) and it looks like being a tough one for the team, but as was the case today, there is a high chance of more rain which could present some unexpected scenarios, which the team will be preparing for this evening.
A busy Saturday of track action got underway with the twentieth Formula 1 Sprint race since the format was introduced in 2021. It turned out to be quite chaotic, possibly the craziest ever. From around two hours before the start, several heavy downpours hit the Miami International Autodrome, so that the track was very wet when half an hour before the 12 o'clock start, the pit lane was open and the drivers headed out to line up on the grid. Charles and Lewis were on Intermediate tyres that they planned to use for the start to assess the wet conditions, but the Monegasque found himself aquaplaning into the barriers at turn 11. The damage to the SF-25 was not repairable in the few minutes prior to the start. An attempt was made to start the race at noon, but there was too much standing water and therefore, after two laps behind the Safety Car, the procedure was stopped. The race eventually got underway with a standing start at 12.28. Lewis was now up to sixth on the grid, as his team-mate was no longer there. He maintained that position off the line but as the race went on and the track dried out, the Englishman was struggling more and more with the tyres. He therefore came in on lap 11 to switch to the Soft slicks, and was immediately the quickest man on track, running fourth after all the others, apart from Lando Norris had pitted. On lap 13, Lewis overtook Max Verstappen to go third and seemed to be on course to even snatch second place. However, a collision between Fernando Alonso and Liam Lawson brought out the Safety Car so that Norris got a "free" stop, taking half as long as usual and thus managed to stay ahead of the Ferrari and team-mate Oscar Piastri. The race finished like that, with Lewis taking a morale-boosting third place and six championship points.
A few hours on from the Sprint race, it was time for qualifying for the Grand Prix itself. The mechanics did a great job to get Charles' SF-25 ready in time. Right from the start it was clear that it would be a very closely contested session: in Q1 Leclerc and Hamilton started on used Softs but they had to take on a new set each to make the cut. Charles and Lewis both used two sets of Soft and while Charles first time was good enough to get to Q3, Lewis did not improve and his earlier 1'27"006 was not enough to get in the top ten and he therefore stayed 12th. In the final phase, Charles immediately went out with his one remaining set of new Softs, but he made a mistake on his first flying lap which meant he had to revert to a set used in Q2. He gave it his best shot and set the eighth fastest time of 1'26"754.
This evening the data from the Sprint race in which the Intermediate and Soft tyres were used, will be analysed, even if the latter is unlikely to come into play even if it is dry. The unknowns that typify a Sprint event are even greater this weekend and that can often lead to opportunities that must be spotted and made use of, as was seen in today's short race.
Lewis Hamilton: Today was definitely an eventful one. We put in a strong performance in the Sprint, which was a great result given the challenging weather and our starting position. I suggested the switch to softs, and the team executed a fantastic pit stop, that really made the difference.
Qualifying was more difficult; we lacked grip and overall pace, and P12 isn't where we want to be. But we'll go through everything overnight and look at how we can optimise the strategy to fight back tomorrow.
Charles Leclerc: It's been a tough weekend so far. This morning wasn't a great start, and in qualifying, I expected to have a chance to turn things around. We just don't have the pace and the grip our competitors have and a track like this reveals this weakness even more. This is not the result we want as a team and there's a lot of work ahead of us.
Fred Vasseur: We are not happy with our qualifying today as we struggled too much with the new sets of tyres right from Q1. We were losing a lot in turns 1 and 2 while in the rest of the lap our pace was decent. We need to see all the data as this weekend we are not extracting all the potential of the car and we were not able to find the right balance, especially for the flying laps.
We can take some positives from the Sprint race, as I think it showed our pace in the dry was quite good and thanks to the right strategy Lewis found himself in a position from which he could do a great job, recovering well from P7 and finishing on the podium.
I'm confident we have a better race pace in the car but of course it's not easy to exploit it starting in the middle of the group. We need to be patient and see how the race will unfold, staying focused on ourselves, ready to seize any opportunity.