Leclerc admits Ferrari are ‘so far behind now’ as Hamilton says Sprint Qualifying was ‘definitely not the pace we were expecting’

Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton gave a downbeat assessment of Ferrari’s performance during Sprint Qualifying at the United States Grand Prix, with Leclerc stating that the squad are “so far behind now” after ending the session towards the bottom of the top 10.

After taking victory at the Circuit of The Americas back in 2024, Leclerc did not seem to be experiencing the same fortune when Friday’s action got underway, having at one stage found himself at risk of being eliminated in SQ1.

The Monegasque eventually wound up in P10 after struggling to match the squad’s rivals in SQ3 and, when asked afterwards about where he had lost time on his lap, Leclerc – who missed out on some running during the day’s earlier practice session due to an issue on his car being investigated in the garage – responded: “Everywhere.

“My lap was clean in SQ3, I don’t regret much [of] what I’ve done in my lap. Maybe [with] a little bit more mileage this morning on the medium [tyre], you can fine-tune the car a little bit better – there might be a tenth in that or a tenth and a half, I don’t know. But it’s not enough – we are so far behind now.”

In terms of whether the Ferrari team can make any changes throughout the rest of the weekend to ensure a better race come Sunday, Leclerc was not hopeful about the possibility of this happening.

“I’ll be very surprised if we found something that will make us [take] such a jump,” the 28-year-old conceded. “I hope I’m wrong, but unfortunately for now it just seems like it’s the potential of our car.

“It’s very surprising the teams that are strong this weekend, apart from obviously the McLaren and the Red Bull which is expected, but you’ve got Nico [Hulkenberg] in front [in P4] that has done probably an amazing lap but he’s been consistently fast this weekend, so we just need to understand if they understood something that we didn’t, but today was a very poor day.”

The day also appeared challenging for Hamilton, who ended Sprint Qualifying two positions ahead of his team mate in P8.

“That was definitely not the pace we were expecting,” Hamilton explained following the squad’s struggles in the session.

Pushed on whether he knew where the time had gone or what the problems might have been, the seven-time World Champion answered: “No, I really don’t. It was looking good in practice and Q1 was looking pretty decent also, and then it just started to fall away from us.

“The car is very, very tough to drive. It just fell away from us – eight tenths is a mountain to climb.”