{"id":317593,"date":"2025-11-30T01:22:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T01:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/317593\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T01:22:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T01:22:16","slug":"theres-zero-performance-in-this-car-charles-leclerc-and-lewis-hamilton-downbeat-over-ferraris-chances-in-qatar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/317593\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018There\u2019s zero performance in this car\u2019 \u2013 Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton downbeat over Ferrari\u2019s chances in Qatar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were once again knocked back by their performances in Qualifying for the Qatar Grand Prix, with neither driver able to keep up with their frontrunning rivals in the highly competitive session.<\/p>\n

While McLaren<\/a>, Mercedes<\/a> and Red Bull<\/a> all seemed to be in the fight for pole position at various points in the session, Ferrari were significantly off the pace and failed to find any improvements after the earlier Sprint.<\/p>\n

The 19-lap event ended with Leclerc<\/a> and Hamilton<\/a> crossing the line in P13 and P17 respectively, with the Briton gaining one position after he started behind Lance Stroll in the pit lane.<\/p>\n

Although he was keen to put himself in a better place for the Grand Prix, Hamilton was knocked out in Q1 and will start from 18th on the grid. With overtaking a challenge at this venue, he will have an uphill battle on his charge to return to the points.<\/p>\n

He previously said in the Sprint<\/a> that the car felt even worse than it did in Sprint Qualifying, where he was similarly eliminated in P18, but after a btterly disappointing Qualifying he admitted: \u201cI was generally feeling better. We made changes and I was feeling better, but just wasn\u2019t quick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamilton has struggled to find his rhythm in his first campaign with Ferrari, adding that he is \u201cincredibly grateful for the support\u201d and he \u201cwouldn\u2019t have made it through this year without\u201d his fans.<\/p>\n

His Monegasque team mate was equally despondent after he wound up P10 in Qualifying, more than a second adrift of Oscar Piastri\u2019s pole lap time. A massive spin in Q3 was the result of the oversteer that he has struggled with all weekend, and he has no belief that it will improve before the race.<\/p>\n

Asked to sum up Qualifying, he replied: \u201cIncredibly difficult day, incredibly difficult weekend. I don\u2019t really know what to say. It\u2019s been extremely difficult to drive this car, to keep it on track. I\u2019m trying absolutely everything to extract anything I can from that car, but at the moment this is the only thing that\u2019s possible for now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s frustrating. The best thing I can do is reset for tomorrow and try to come back to the track motivated and try to do something special. Am I optimistic for tomorrow? I am not, which is quite rare. Normally I\u2019m a very optimistic person but I have to say that this weekend, there\u2019s zero performance in this car.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leclerc added that he tried to reset for the Sprint, but \u201cit didn\u2019t work out\u201d as he lost four positions and was seen veering wide off the circuit multiple times.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope it will work better tomorrow, but nothing that I\u2019ve felt with this car makes me think that I will have a better feeling tomorrow,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll wait and try to maximise whatever is possible tomorrow. With Safety Cars, hopefully we can get a little bit lucky \u2013 that\u2019s probably my only hope for tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were once again knocked back by their performances in Qualifying for the Qatar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-317593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}