Ferrari mystified by lack of pole pace after qualifying slump

Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton have been left to rue Ferrari’s missing one-lap pace after the pole favorites dipped to fourth and fifth in qualifying for the United States Grand Prix.

Hamilton topped the final practice session earlier on Saturday, completing a Ferrari practice sweep, and teammate Charles Leclerc was quickest in Q2, raising expectations for at least a front-row start for the Italian team.

But the red cars were left behind by the surging Kimi Antonelli, who took pole, and both Red Bull Racing cars, who completed the top three.

Leclerc qualified fourth, 0.232s off the pace. Hamilton, one of the few drivers to meaningfully improve with their second Q3 run, was one position back and a further 0.044s adrift.

Leclerc suspected that climatic condition changes in Q3 undermined Ferrari’s pace, though he admitted the team also wasn’t as good as extracting the most from the car in the pole shootout.

“We had the potential in the car, but the car also includes tires, and in Q3 unfortunately we were not in the right place,” he said.

“It was like one or two degrees less in Q3, and for me it was a huge difference. I just really struggled in the out lap; I was sliding quite a lot already from the out lap, and that made it very difficult after that.

“It is quite frustrating, but there are reasons for it — but at the same time, I think we just need to work harder and try and understand very well those tires even better than what we are doing now, because for the others I think it’s a bit easier to extract the lap time in Q3 than it is for us, and as soon as we are a tiny bit outside the window, we pay a lot the price, so this is something we need to look into.”

Hamilton, though, said he didn’t feel the effects of the changing weather and was left mystified by his lack of pace.

“I don't know what happened,” Hamilton said. “My car felt really good. The lap was solid.

“I had a really good out-lap, so no problems for me [there]. The car felt good. It was a clean lap. No issues at all, really.”

The Englishman could only point to his car’s lack of straight-line speed relative to Mercedes and, more recently, Red Bull Racing as more than offsetting Ferrari’s usual strengths in the corners — though he added that he feared other teams were also overpowering this usual advantage.

“I think that's the only place we lose,” he said. “I think our car is really solid, at least as good [in the corners], if not maybe slightly better than the others.

“But I think they have closed up on chassis. We’ve seen the Red Bull has closed up on their downforce. Mercedes took a 0.3s step of upgrade at least. We saw it a couple of races ago. I think they're starting to figure out how to utilize that, so they're now matching us through the corners.

“We're not able to take that step in this season to close that speed on the straight.

“If we had the same power as them, we'd be right there in the battle — I think we’d probably be on the front row — but we know that’s the case, so we try to make the best we can out of it.”

Though Leclerc was buoyed by having won this race from fourth on the grid two years ago, Hamilton was less optimistic that victory could be on the cars from the third row.

“We have to be realistic,” he said. “We're fourth and fifth.

“It's very hard to overtake here. Even if you're P2 on the grid, it's hard to beat someone.

“I’ve raced here since 2012. It took a lot to get past [Sebastian] Vettel back then, but maybe with strategy we can progress.

“If we can get a good run up into Turn 1, there are opportunities there, and there’s strategy. We’ll just see.”