At the Japanese GP weekend, Lewis Hamilton was looking more in tune with the SF-25 than he has been so far this season. In fact, qualifying saw the seven-time world champion match his teammate Charles Leclerc’s lap times. But his form disappeared once the top-10 shootout in Q3 began.
Leclerc drove his SF-25 to a well-deserved second-row start behind the likes of Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, and Oscar Piastri. He outperformed his machinery by out-qualifying Mercedes’ George Russell—who looked to be in contention for pole position all through qualifying.
While the Monegasque racing ace was able to extract optimum performance from the car, Hamilton‘s drop-off in pace has been attributed to a probable “bad choice” of setup by Ferrari team boss Frederic Vasseur.
“I haven’t spoken to him yet, we need to understand what happened to Lewis in Q3 because until Q2 he was fighting for a thousandth with Leclerc. Anything could have happened, a bad choice of settings in qualifying or the wind,” he explained. While Leclerc finished P4, the seven-time world champion was four-tenths off him in P8. Not a good starting position at Suzuka.
Hamilton often likes to rejig the power unit and car settings on the fly to extract the last few tenths. While at Mercedes, this seemed to go wrong from time to time for the #44 driver and could be the cause for his Q3 woes on Saturday.
| Fred Vasseur on Sir Lewis Hamilton’s qualifying:
“I haven’t spoken to him yet, we need to understand what happened to Lewis in Q3 because until Q2 he was fighting for a thousandth with Leclerc. Anything could have happened, a bad choice of settings in qualifying or the…
— sim (@simsgazette) April 5, 2025
Heading into the Grand Prix on Sunday, Hamilton will have to pull off a masterclass to climb up the pecking order. With his old ally, rain, predicted to affect the race’s proceedings, the Briton could sneak into the top five.
However, he will have to sit with Ferrari for a debrief to figure out the underlying issue that caused him to fall back in Q3. Certainly, it seems like the SF-25 has some characteristics that Hamilton hasn’t been able to adapt to so far.
Hamilton hopes for rain after qualifying disappointment in Japan
One of the biggest pain points for the 40-year-old was the balance of his car. Hamilton had been complaining of suffering from understeer, and it was apparent that this weakness on corner entry was also contributing to snaps of oversteer on exit—something that lost him a chunk of lap time in Q3.
As it turns out, the Briton did experiment with the setup of his SF-25—apparently by applying a higher front-downforce configuration as compared to his teammate. “We went in different directions with setup. I had a lot of understeer and just couldn’t dial it up,” he told Sky Sports F1.
Given the higher downforce setup, Hamilton is wishing for there to be rain at the Suzuka International Circuit come race day. “I genuinely love the rain, so I hope it comes tomorrow after a qualifying like that,” he added.
Even though he is going to start from the fourth row, the Briton would back his ability in the rain to bounce back around Suzuka—where he has won four times. However, Hamilton knows this will mainly be a damage control race, as Ferrari still seems to be lacking pace relative to the front-running McLaren.
