Lewis Hamilton Admits Ferrari’s Miami Upgrade Was a Letdown: “I Have No Idea”

A five-week break, a freight container of new upgrades flown to Florida, and a Ferrari that briefly looked like the fastestcar on track in opening practice. By the time the Sprint Qualifying chequered flag dropped at the Miami International Autodrome on Friday evening, Lewis Hamilton was seventh on the grid for Saturday’s Sprint and visibly out of explanations.

Ferrari had every reason to expect more.

Charles Leclerc had been four-tenths up on Hamilton in the early SQ2 runs with Mercedes almost half a second off the pace, and the expectations on its upgrades – by most paddock accounts the largest Maranello has brought all year – was that Ferrari and McLaren had finally clawed their way back to the Silver Arrows. Then SQ3 happened…

Lando Norris took pole on a 1m27.869s, with Kimi Antonelli second, Piastri third, Leclerc fourth, Verstappen fifth, Russell sixth, and Hamilton seventh on a 1m28.618s .

A Big Moment at Turn 17 and a Bigger Question

Hamilton had been quicker than both Mercedes drivers in SQ1 and SQ2 before a big moment at Turn 17 wrecked a promising final run. That part is fixable. The part that isn’t, and the part Hamilton kept circling back to in front of the Sky cameras, is why the car felt the way it did once everyone else found another tenth and Ferrari didn’t.

Asked whether Maranello had expected more from its upgrade haul, Hamilton answered:

I just… we didn’t really know what to expect. I had hoped that we would be better. But yeah, it… the car didn’t feel particularly great.”

He continued: “I have no idea. I thought we would be stronger than we were today. Going to have to do some work overnight to try and figure out why we’re not that quick. And yeah. I was hopeful coming in, positive, that we could be much higher, but not meant to be.”

What Ferrari’s Friday Actually Means

Really, the day wasn’t all bad for the Scuderia.

The McLaren and Ferrari upgrade packages do appear to have dragged both teams back into a fight with the previously dominant Mercedes, even if Ferrari’s SQ3 was, charitably, untidy. Leclerc in fourth, half a second off pole, is a more honest reflection of how fast the car is compared to Hamilton’s seventh.

The harder question for Ferrari is the one Hamilton effectively asked on camera: where did the time go between SQ2, where the car was leading, and SQ3, where it wasn’t?

The Sprint on Saturday will give Ferrari 19 laps of race-pace data before traditional qualifying that afternoon.