Hamilton admits adapting to Ferrari ‘doesn’t feel natural’

After a low-key performance in his first Qualifying outing for Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton explained the immense effort it took to break into the top 10 for his new team in Melbourne.

Ferrari topped the timesheets in the second practice session for the Australian Grand Prix thanks to Charles Leclerc, but their pace fell away in Qualifying as the other frontrunners surged ahead, leaving the Monegasque and Hamilton – who suffered a Q2 spin – in seventh and eighth respectively.

The duo finished behind drivers from the more traditionally midfield teams of Racing Bulls and Williams, with Leclerc almost seven-tenths away from Lando Norris’ pole position time as Hamilton found himself a further 0.218s adrift.

Despite struggling to be in the mix for the front row, the seven-time World Champion was optimistic about the challenge of learning the intricacies of the Italian team in a competitive setting.

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“It doesn’t feel natural, it’s been challenging,” he said after Qualifying. “Just the normal set-up changes you make, it’s difficult to say too much but there are all new tools that I’m still trying to get my head around and understand exactly where it impacts the car.

“I feel good that I got pretty much everything from the car in the end. I think there’s probably still a couple of tenths left.

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“I definitely didn’t expect us to be as far off as we were but to be that close to Charles in the end in my first Qualifying session in this car… I really am still learning this car.

“I’ve been chipping away at it all weekend and finetuning it, finding new tools that we didn’t get to test in testing that we’ve never used before. I think we’ve done a good job.”

Charles Leclerc of Monaco and Scuderia Ferrari is interviewed during qualifying ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Australia at Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit on March 15, 2025 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images) — Leclerc was mystified by his qualifying struggles after a strong performance in FP2

Small margins were the theme of Qualifying at Albert Park as the field appears to be even more competitive than last season, which left Leclerc to rue a number of errors that negatively affected his lap times.

Speaking about his performance in Q3, he said: “The first lap was pretty good. Second lap wasn’t as good – it felt messy. All in all, we just didn’t quite have the pace.

“I was trying to find more but that pushed me to do a few mistakes. The rear was quite unstable so we struggled quite a bit, which is a shame.

“Before coming here, we were definitely expecting to be on the back foot but after the Friday we thought that there was maybe a bit more pace in the car. At the end, it wasn’t the case.”