Upbeat Lewis Hamilton tight-lipped as he teases Ferrari ‘tweaks'

Lewis Hamilton credited a different approach and tweaks to his Ferrari as he enjoyed a better performance during qualifying at the Dutch Grand Prix.

The seven-time world champion, who has been comprehensively outperformed by Charles Leclerc this season, was on a par with the Monegasque and was at times faster during qualifying at Zandvoort.

Although Leclerc ultimately pipped Hamilton to sixth on the grid in Q3, the Briton was the closest he has been to his teammate for some time over one lap.

After qualifying, Hamilton revealed changes to both his approach and car helped him feel more comfortable behind the wheel of the SF-25, though he would not divulge further details.

“I tried to have a slightly different approach to the weekend, not going to go into details of what that is, but some tweaks before I even got here, and then through the weekend, and it’s been a lot smoother,” Hamilton told reporters at Zandvoort, where Crash.net are on the ground.

“Yesterday the car was a bit unpredictable and I think we made some changes. Maybe the wind makes it a little bit difficult as well, but I think we were looking for progress and I feel like I have had that this weekend, I’ve not been in Q3 for some time, so I am grateful for that.”

Hamilton continued: “There’s some things I changed on the way in which enabled me to start on the better foot. My first lap yesterday was quickest at the time – then the next lap was a spin.

“The car as I said is quite unpredictable, but I think the set-up changes we worked well together with the engineers this weekend, it’s not been up and down on changes, it’s been quite stable.

“We just made small tweaks, really really small tweaks, and therefore just been trying to gain more and more confidence in the car and I think that’s what’s happened the last couple of days.

“It definitely feels like it’s been one of the most solid couple of days so far of the year, as I said that’s to do with some of the improvements of the process, my approach, it’s just a little calmer overall.

“The team did a great job through qualifying, we just need more performance at this track, tomorrow maybe race pace will be better.”

Hamilton: Ferrari still not where we want to be

Despite being buoyed by his personal progress, Hamilton conceded Ferrari still need significant improvements after lagging well behind F1 pacesetters McLaren.

“It’s definitely encouraging at least on my side of the garage to have a better result, as the boys in the garage deserve it, and the team deserves it. Happy I could be there or thereabouts, but we’re not where we want to be,” Hamilton acknowledged.

“To be seven tenths off, six tenths off, in qualifying on a track like this that’s a huge amount, so we’ve got to understand what that is because Charles is P1 at the last race. Naturally we do still have that deficit, we’ve had it all year long.”

Asked what the biggest limit of the car was, Hamilton replied: “A combination of things, but ultimately we need more load to go through the corners as fast as McLaren.

“Now is that load or is that coming from the tyres, difficult to know, maybe they are getting their tyres in a different operating windows to us potentially, or a combination of both.

“I mean McLaren definitely have more downforce than everybody but then they’re not very draggy, if we were to match them we’d have to go up a couple of levels of wing but have the efficiency of a lower wing, then it’s a combination of getting the car to be more stable through corner. The wind makes it tricky, tailwind into turn 1 and crosswind into places, and I think this car is quite sensitive to wind.”