Hamilton explains ‘not spectacular’ start in Austria as Leclerc admits Ferrari have ‘a lot of work’ to do

Lewis Hamilton has explained the issues he faced during a “not spectacular” Friday at the Austrian Grand Prix, with Ferrari team mate Charles Leclerc also suggesting that there is “a lot of work to be done” overnight.

While Leclerc sat out FP1 to hand his car over to rookie Dino Beganovic, Hamilton had a disrupted session owing to a gearbox problem, meaning that he lost time on track while the team worked on his SF-25 in the garage.

The seven-time World Champion eventually returned to action, but had the lowest lap count of the session. And while things ran more smoothly in FP2, the Briton – who ended the hour in 10th on the timesheets – admitted that it had not been a straightforward day at the Red Bull Ring.

Asked to assess his Friday, Hamilton responded: “Not spectacular. We had a problem in the morning with the gearbox, which was obviously difficult, frustrating for everyone in the garage obviously because the boys did a great job, kept topping it up.

“But you go out, you can only do one lap, and so we didn’t get the long runs. But I think we recovered okay with it, they did a great job changing the gearbox and getting us ready for FP2.

“Charles was six-tenths off, I was close to a second off, so not ideal. But I think there’s lots of learnings, so I think we will make some changes. Hopefully we can try and get a little bit closer. We won’t be at the front.”

Pushed on whether the new floor that the team have brought to the event is part of a wider package spread over the next few races aimed at moving the squad forwards, Hamilton said: “A huge amount of work went on to bring the floor, but as you see it’s not necessarily changed our competitiveness.

“The car actually doesn’t feel bad, we’re just a huge chunk off pace-wise, so we need to look into that and that’s about it really. We just keep pushing, just trying to dial the car in more and see what we can get, but it’s obviously very close in the top 10 so a tenth could make a difference, so we’ll work towards trying to gain at least that over the night.”

Leclerc also appeared disappointed by how Friday had unfolded, the Monegasque finishing his sole practice session in fifth place.

When quizzed on whether he was happy with his day’s work, Leclerc answered: “Not really. [Missing] FP1 didn’t really compromise FP2. I felt kind of at ease on the track straightaway, but not really at ease with the car and the way the car feels, so there’s quite a bit of work to be done for tomorrow.

“It doesn’t feel like the performance is quite there yet, but hopefully we will put everything together tomorrow and do a step forward, but there’s quite a lot of work to be done tonight.

“Long run [pace] seems to be more positive as we very often have – we are faster on the race [pace] than we are in Qualifying. In Qualifying there’s a lot of work to be done.”

Despite the difficulties on Friday, Leclerc remains confident that Ferrari’s race pace can at least put them nearer to their rivals in theory.

“Our race pace is very positive,” the eight-time race winner commented. “We were, I would say, [setting] very similar lap times to the fastest guys, so that’s good, but the problem is that we’ve seen recently that everything is so close, and as soon as you start P6, P7, then in the race it’s extremely difficult to come back where you should be.

“So that’s really our target, is to try and maximise Qualifying – whether we’ll make it or not I don’t know, but there will be a lot of work tonight to try and maximise that.”

As for Beganovic, the F2 driver was delighted to experience FP1 at the wheel of the SF-25, the 21-year-old admitting that he felt “on it straightaway”.

“It felt very good, it’s always very nice to drive an F1 car,” said Beganovic. “Doing an F1 weekend is obviously even more special, and on top of that doing it in a Ferrari, even more special. It means a lot to me.

“This is my sixth year now [in the Ferrari Driver Academy], so it’s been a long journey and here we are doing the steps towards my goal, which is to have an F1 seat one day, and doing these programmes that we have in the Academy really helps me to show myself but also get a first taste of what it is.”