‘The difference it makes is unbelievable’ – Hamilton and Leclerc split on Ferrari's Zandvoort changes

Lewis Hamilton has raved about the “unbelievable” improvements that Ferrari made to his car over the Dutch Grand Prix weekend, but his team mate Charles Leclerc was contrastingly left searching for answers after he endured a “less than ideal” session.

The Briton didn’t enjoy a smooth start to Round 12, having felt uncomfortable in Sprint Qualifying before he failed to progress during the 24-lap event and came home in P7.

As a result, the Briton and Ferrari opted to tweak his set-up with the target of improving during Qualifying, which would be crucial as overtaking is more of a challenge at the Circuit Zandvoort. The adjustments worked and Hamilton wound up P5, just over three-tenths adrift of George Russell’s pole position time.

“I’m so much happier with the car, honestly,” the seven-time World Champion explained. “It’s crazy. We changed a lot of things, but it doesn’t really look that big. But the difference it makes in the car is unbelievable.

“The difficult thing is I started FP1 with good confidence, I lost it all in [Sprint] Qualifying, and all through the [Sprint] race I had no confidence in the balance – the car was constantly breaking away from me.

“Then I go into Qualifying and the car is there… the balance is there at least, so I was building and building and building. Some more laps and I think we could have probably done better, but I think ultimately the tyres were the issue for us.”

Although Hamilton was left feeling “a lot more optimistic” about Ferrari’s chances on race day, Leclerc did not share his belief, even though he was only marginally off the pace set by his team mate in Q3.

The Monegasque qualified P6, which did mark a disappointing departure from the performance that saw him seize second place in the Sprint, causing him to bemoan the differences that appeared between sessions.

Leclerc said: “We’ll have to look [at] two things, really. I think the first one is mostly the fact that we’ve started changing engine modes from Q1 to Q2, Q2 to Q3, then the car is just doing different things underneath me, which is not something I enjoy. We’ve probably missed a bit of performance there.

“Second is the prep lap that we’ve done, that the others seem to not have done. I don’t feel like my tyres would have been ready without that preparation lap, but we’ve got to be open-minded and look at what the others have done.

“It’s a very tough track to overtake on, so that’s why Qualifying was so important. To start P6 is less than ideal. But now it’s the way it is.

“We’ll have to maximise the start, hopefully. It’s been two race starts that haven’t been particularly smooth, so I hope the one tomorrow is.”