Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari, Interlagos, 2025

Lewis Hamilton is pessimistic about his chances in Sunday’s Brazilian Grand Prix after failing to reach Q3.

The Ferrari driver complained about his car’s poor rear grip throughout the session. “I didn’t have any rear end,” he said after qualifying. “The tyres weren’t working today.”

“The car’s set-up felt good,” he told the official Formula 1 channel, “it was just how we prepared the tyres.”

Hamilton did not qualify in the top 10 for either of this weekend’s races at Interlagos. He will start the grand prix from 13th, two places lower than he qualified for the sprint race. “I can’t do anything from there,” he predicted.

Charles Leclerc, who was three tenths of a second quicker than Hamilton in Q2, took third on the grid in his Ferrari. However he said he could easily have been much further back on the grid.

“It’s been a very, very, very difficult weekend so far and I will take it,” he said. “I’m very happy with the way we’ve performed, with the way we executed everything because it was going to be a very difficult qualifying for us. A P3 on a weekend like this is a really, really good result because the pace was not there.”

“It’s a matter of one tenth, or one tenth and a half, from having a disastrous qualifying to a very good qualifying with the gaps there this weekend,” he added, “so it was all about putting everything together and I’m very happy we did that.”

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Leclerc qualified five places higher for the sprint race than he did for the grand prix. However he said Ferrari haven’t found any significant improvement with their car since Friday’s sprint race qualifying session.

“I will look forward, whatever our pace is, trying to do something special,” he said, “but we haven’t revolutionised the car from sprint quali to quali. We did some fine-tuning.”

Leclerc finished fifth in the sprint race, two places ahead of Hamilton.

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2025 Brazilian Grand Prix

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