The Ferrari drivers were on two opposite ends of the spectrum of happyness after Sprint qualifying for the 2026 F1 British GP. On one end there was an elated Lewis Hamilton after getting pole. On the other end Charles Leclerc felt fairly defeated, as he had a significant margin to his team mate.
Hamilton happy his fears didn’t come true
After discussing the expected power limitation issues yesterday, Lewis Hamilton was more than happy it was not as bad as he was told.
“I am so happy,” he smiled. “So so happy, honestly because, if you’d even heard me in the press conference, the track’s not going to be the same, because that’s what we all thought, and the track’s still phenomenal, the track still feels great.
“The engine drop off is not anywhere near what we anticipated, and on top of that, we really thought…
“Yesterday they were scaring me, they were like, you’re going to be six tenths off in a straight line, to these guys, and in the last race we were four tenths off in a straight line.
“But today all of a sudden we’re kind of there, and I was like, is this real, are they going to turn up in quali, and we were right there competing with them.“
A big part of that is thanks to the people back in Maranello, Hamilton acknowledged.
“So it just goes back to, I always want to bring it back to everyone back at the factory, because I can’t say it enough, they’re pushing.
“Like last year we were kind of stuck in the rut, not a lot we could do, now they’re finding things, they’re adding things to the car, and this weekend, every single weekend we’re bringing small little bits, and adding performance to this car, and it felt awesome. Silverstone track is the best track to drive.”
Leclerc not getting the confidence he needs
At the other side of the garage, Leclerc was struggling to explain the four tenths Hamilton had on him. This year the speed just doesn’t seem to come naturally for the man with 27 pole positions to his name.
“Well, [the gap is] what I’m looking at at the moment. Obviously it’s been quite a bit that I realised I didn’t have the ease that I had last year with last year’s car.
“And even when I push, whenever I put things together, we speak about hundreths, and Lewis is more often at 100% of the potential of the car, which I’m not.”
Leclerc knows a few hundreths isn’t going to cut it against Hamilton, but as long as he doesn’t have the feeling, he knows it will be tough.
“So I’ve got to work on everything really,” he explains. “But I think most importantly it’s just the feeling with this car, when you don’t get quite the feeling, then it’s difficult to extract the lap time and to have the confidence of every Saturday going into qualifying -in this case it’s a Friday, but anyway- and get to the limit of the car, which I’m struggling to just be consistent to be at my 100%.
“Q1 and Q2 I was close to it, I was quite confident for Q3, but coming Q3 I lost the car, I just don’t feel the car as well as I should.”
Silverstone seems to suit new power unit
After the Austrian GP Hamilton feared a big gap to Mercedes, but at Silverstone Ferrari’s new power unit seems to be doing a lot better. Nonetheless, the nine-time British GP winner kept some reservations regarding Ferrari’s chances.
“Well I think, I have to go and look at the long run pace,” he started off. “But the car felt great on the long run to be honest, so it’s going to be tough obviously, but these guys they’re very very close.
“But I don’t think it’s impossible, and we’re in a great position, but obviously there’s a lot of towing, that can be done through the first laps, which won’t be easy to keep a Mercedes, or a Red Bull engine behind, but I’ll give it absolutely everything for these fans.”
Leclerc caught off guard as well, as he admits Ferrari expected to be on the back foot in Silverstone.
“We are extremely surprised,” Leclerc admitted. “I think, with Lewis taking the pole today, but in general we were expecting just a much bigger gap to the cars in front, so it’s a good step forward.
“I think as a team we are very surprised to be that competitive on a track like this.”
