‘Time will tell’ if Hamilton can reset over winter break as anger builds

Lewis Hamilton says he is feeling a lot of anger after his fourth Q1 exit in a row at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and he is unsure if the winter break will be long enough to reset.

Ferrari has endured a winless season so far – excluding Sprint races – and Hamilton has yet to score a podium, but his qualifying form has been particularly problematic in the closing stages of the year. His 16th place on the grid for Abu Dhabi is actually his best grid position since Brazil, where he was 13th, and after being eliminated in the first part of qualifying for the fourth consecutive session, he admitted the off-season break might not be long enough for him to reset mentally.

“Time will tell, time will tell,” Hamilton said. “This is the shortest break … I don’t [have a plan to reset] at the moment, no. I don't have a plan for anything.

"I don't have the words to describe the feeling inside,” he added to Sky Sports. “[There is an] unbearable amount of anger and rage and yeah, there's not really much I can say about it.”

Hamilton crashed in FP3 (pictured above) to lose out on some practice running and leave Ferrari repairing his car, but after suggesting something broke on the car at the time, he said any potential failure had yet to be diagnosed.

“It definitely doesn't help when you have a [crash] … you miss your second run, but the car was feeling great, just had some bottoming and then lost the back end.

“They just fixed the car. They saw some bouncing going in and they said that carried all the way through.”

Hamilton’s teammate Charles Leclerc advanced into Q3 and qualified fifth but was also at risk earlier in the session, something he says could be down to Ferrari focusing on its 2026 car more than other teams.

“These are sessions that if [we] do the slightest mistakes, we are out,” Leclerc said. “And since four, five races [ago] for some reason, the others, especially the midfield, kind of closed the gap, and we have lost competitiveness.

“I can see how tricky the car is and how you've just got to go full commitment, and it's either in the wall or through Q1 and then you do need to do the same in Q2 and then you need to do the same in Q3.

“It's much more difficult to understand something from the car when you really have to push to the absolute limit. In Q2 I thought I would put it into the wall quite a few times, and that makes it difficult to also improve the car like probably the McLaren or Red Bull do by pushing a little bit less in Q1 and Q2 – you understand more about what's going on with the car. So, yeah, it's a tricky situation.”