Scuderia Ferrari’s disappointing start to the 2025 F1 season persisted at Imola, as both Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton failed to progress to Q3 at the Imola GP. The Scuderia’s hopes for a stronger showing at their first home race of the year quickly faded, with Leclerc and Hamilton qualifying 11th and 12th respectively.
The day began on a troubling note, as both drivers reported brake and setup issues during final practice. These early signs foreshadowed a difficult qualifying session. Ultimately, both drivers exited in Q2, unable to extract sufficient pace on their final flying laps. Leclerc missed the cut by less than a tenth of a second, while Hamilton fell a further tenth and a half behind.
Hamilton: “I definitely feel devastated.”
Following the session, Hamilton expressed clear frustration. Although he felt a stronger connection with the car’s setup compared to recent weekends, the Briton could not conceal his disappointment.
“Yeah, I definitely feel devastated, I feel just gutted I guess. Because the car was generally feeling really good. I honestly felt like the car, the setup was just right, the brakes were working, everything was kind of in place. And we just can’t go quicker.
If you look at how quick Max is going through Turn 2 and 3, we just can’t match it. And when we put that new soft on at the end, for some reason it just didn’t come alive. There was no extra grip.”
Despite the setbacks, Hamilton acknowledged that Ferrari had made some progress. However, he emphasised the urgent need for upgrades in order to challenge at the front.
“I think we made progress this weekend. The bit that I was talking about before is still not where it needs to be, and there’s performance in that, and we need more upgrades for sure. We’ve got to start adding on some stuff that we’re not at that level.”
I mean, look at Max’s rear, it just doesn’t move. He’s doing 6 to 10k faster through Turn 2 than us, and we can’t match that. Same with the McLaren’s. We’ve just got to keep pushing, keep applying pressure. I believe the guys can find some performance.”
Lack of correlation between the car and the results
The British driver also explained how the results don’t reflect the effort made on the upgrades and the general feel of the car, highlighting how the softer C6 tyres failed to turn on in their last stint. He said:
“I don’t think that’s where the car is at. I think we’ve made some really good progress this weekend, and it doesn’t show in the results, which is why generally I’m devastated to see us get knocked out there.”
He added, “I feel like we made all the right changes. For some reason, we just didn’t switch on the tyre at the end there, and I think it’s the same for Charles, so we have to look into that. It makes the race a lot harder for us, but we’ll keep pushing.”
“Foundation building” and the Tifosi experience
Although results have remained underwhelming, Hamilton maintained focus on his long-term goals at Ferrari. He underlined that this season serves as a foundational year, one in which he seeks to integrate fully with the team and initiate broader development.
“I think this is, at least from my side, this is a foundation building. Getting to grips with everything within the team, making changes that are needed in order to help the team navigate to success long term.”
That’s the stuff that I’m focused on in the background. There’s a lot of improvements we can make across the board, as well as obviously building a faster car. I have all the faith and belief we can do that.”
As Hamilton experiences his first home race as a Ferrari driver, he reflected on the unique energy of racing in front of the Tifosi.
“It feels amazing. I mean, there’s something, it’s magical when you’re in this team, the support. You see how much the Ferrari, what Ferrari means to people. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I know we’ve got a massive crowd here. I think it’s sold out or something for tomorrow. And as I said, I really thought we were going to be getting through. I thought the car was alive. And watching these guys doing 14.7s, I mean, we could just get to 15.7s. That’s a lot of time missing.”
Looking ahead at the race
Looking towards Sunday’s Grand Prix, Hamilton admitted the circuit characteristics would limit Ferrari’s ability to recover, despite solid straight-line performance.
“I mean, this is not a great race circuit to race on. It’s great to drive a single lap, but overtaking, you get stuck in a DRS train, and there’s not going to be a lot of movement tomorrow. But we are all on softer tyres, and we’ll see what we can do strategy-wise. We’ll try and pick them off if we can. I feel like race pace could be good, but our race pace was decent, that’s it.”
While Ferrari’s homecoming weekend has not yielded the results they anticipated, Hamilton remains focused on long-term progress. As the team regroups ahead of Sunday, their resilience and strategic execution will determine how far they can climb up the order at Imola.
