Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton only qualified seventh, but his spirits were high after Saturday’s qualifying for the Dutch Grand Prix.
Hamilton’s “dream” move to Ferrari this season has been more of a nightmare that has left all parties disappointed.
The seven-time World Champion was joining one of the most storied racing teams in the history of motorsports.
At the summer break, a little more than halfway through the season, Hamilton sat sixth, one place down on his teammate Charles Leclerc, though no podiums or wins to his name — other than the Chinese Sprint Race win.
It is important to note how poor the SF-25 has been this season, relative to expectations.
Leclerc has managed to score some podiums and fight for a single race win, but overall the car lacks the needed pace to do regularly.
The car’s performance, along with switching to a new team and learning a new car philosophy, is an important piece to the puzzle of explaining Hamilton’s problems, though the results still paint a disappointing picture.
During the last couple of races before the break, the British icon appeared low on confidence and questioning his abilities.
After taking the three-week break to reset mentally, Hamilton entered the Dutch Grand Prix race weekend with renewed energy.
The results? Hamilton got a P7 starting spot for the race, just one place under Leclerc and five hundredths away from his rapid teammate.
“I tried to have a slightly different approach into the weekend. I’m not going to go into details of what that is, but some tweaks before I even got here and then through the weekend,” the Brit said.
“It’s been a lot smoother. Yesterday’s car was a bit unpredictable and I think we made some changes.
“I think maybe the wind makes it a little bit difficult as well. But I think we’re looking for progress and I feel like I have had that this weekend.”
Ferrari are still quite far off McLaren in terms of overall car performance, but Hamilton is taking Saturday as a step in the right direction.
“It’s definitely encouraging, at least on my side of the garage, to have a better result,” he added.
“The boys in the garage deserve it and the team deserve it, so I’m happy I could be there or thereabouts. But of course, we’re not where we want to be.
“To be 7 tenths off, 6 and a half tenths off in qualifying on a track like this, that’s a huge amount.
“We’ve got to try and understand what that is, because Charles was P1 in the last race. But naturally, we do still have that deficit.”
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