Lewis Hamilton called the Japanese Grand Prix “pretty terrible” after slipping away from a podium position and finishing sixth at Suzuka. The Ferrari driver gained third place following a mid-race Safety Car and a restart overtake on George Russell but could not hold off Mercedes and team-mate Charles Leclerc as the race progressed.
Hamilton lost places late on to Lando Norris as he struggled for pace, crossing the line in the same sixth position he had started. “Pretty terrible ultimately because I was P3 and I ended up going backwards. I just need to understand where I was losing all the power,” he told Sky Sports F1. “I had a real lack of power, particularly in the second stint, but even at the beginning I couldn’t keep up with people just through a lack of power. I don’t understand this. I’m full gas, managing where I’m asked to manage and for some reason just lacking power, so I need to figure out if there’s something wrong with the car or not. Still, we got some points.”
It was Hamilton’s most difficult weekend since joining Ferrari, following a fourth-place finish in Australia and his first Ferrari podium in China. He trailed Leclerc across the Suzuka weekend and admitted confusion about his lack of pace: “I love being in Japan, I’ve generally enjoyed driving. It’s just, as I said, I just really got trying to understand. I had a really good stint of managing the tyres and then just didn’t have the pace to just keep up. And it’s never fun when you’re just barely holding onto a pack. And when I got the fresh tyres, I still couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Just power-wise, I couldn’t stay ahead of people, which was really confusing. I need to understand.”
Leclerc recovered from losing out during the Safety Car to beat Russell and Hamilton in close battles and secure third place in the Drivers’ Championship, remaining 23 points behind leader Kimi Antonelli. Leclerc finished under two seconds behind second-placed Oscar Piastri, who recorded his first podium of the season. “Second place was maybe on the cards but I think we extracted the maximum we could,” Leclerc said. “With the Safety Car we were unlucky, Oscar had a bit of air to breathe and maybe he was a bit nicer with his tyres. I had to push straight away, which was a little tricky.”
On the performance gap, Leclerc added: “Are we as fast as the Mercedes? I don’t think so. They still have a big advantage. It’s up to us to try and change that situation. The Mercedes power units have a big advantage over us at the moment. This is a focus but we must not forget that there are huge gains in developing the chassis, the aerodynamics, putting the tyres in the right window. The engine we can’t change anyway but in the mean time we need to improve everything around the car.”
F1 returns May 1-3 with the Miami Grand Prix, the season’s second Sprint weekend.