Dramatic Ferrari performance swing leaves both drivers flummoxed

Ferrari’s significant performance swing at the United States Grand Prix has left both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc scratching their heads.

After struggling to eighth and 10th in sprint qualifying on Friday, Ferrari enjoyed a much better regular qualifying, with Leclerc taking third and Hamilton putting his SF-25 fifth on the grid.

Ferrari were much more competitive on Saturday in Austin but neither Hamilton or Leclerc could explain the reason behind the dramatic swing.

“I was struggling with the balance from the get-go, I had massive understeer,” seven-time world champion Hamilton said.

“So I came in, I put two holes of wing in, went out, came in, put two holes of wing in, just kept adding and adding. I think I added like eight holes of front wing today.

“With that understeer it made it really difficult and saturated the fronts. The last lap was closer to the balance I was looking for but still, if I took that right back to Q1, that’s the car I needed earlier on to then build on.

“But overall an improvement for us as a team. Great job by everyone in the garage and the engineers. We made a step forward today. It’s great to be up and amongst the top five. I would have loved to be higher but I’ll push tomorrow.”

Ferrari need to understand performance swing

Leclerc admitted it was a “big surprise” for him to be in the top three and just 0.006 seconds adrift of second on the grid.

“It was quite a big surprise especially considering the weekend has been very difficult for us since the beginning,” the Monegasque explained.

"We tried to put everything together in qualifying, we managed to do so, but I think there are still things we need to understand with this car because there is a bit too much of a swing of performance in the weekend without fundamentally changing the car.

"But it's been an interesting Sprint race this morning, I think we learnt a lot. We applied that in qualifying and it seems to be working, so I hope that from now on, we kind of catch back a little bit.

"Our car is normally stronger in the race than it is in qualifying, so that's a positive. I don't know if it's strong enough to go and fight with Max and the McLaren, but we'll do everything.”

Asked what had changed with his Ferrari, Leclerc replied: “We've changed a few things, but it's not like there's been something that we've done a massive change with. It was all about fine tuning.

“There's something more specific that I've changed on my side, which I think went towards my driving style a little bit and maybe that helped. But a swing of performance like from yesterday to today is still to be understood, to be completely honest.

“There was more wind. We know that with our car, this is normally a strong point, which probably helped us today. But again, it's a big swing of performance, so we still need to understand.”