Lewis Hamilton has ‘100% faith’ in Ferrari after disqualification

SUZUKA – Lewis Hamilton has expressed his total confidence in Ferrari after the Italian Formula One team’s double disqualification in China.

The cars of seven-time world champion Hamilton and teammate Charles Leclerc failed post-race technical checks at the second round of the season in Shanghai, after they finished sixth and fifth respectively.

“I saw someone said something about whether I’m losing faith in the team, which is complete rubbish,” Hamilton, winner of the Shanghai sprint race, told reporters on April 2, ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix.

“I have absolute 100 per cent faith in this team,” added the 40-year-old Briton, who joined in January from Mercedes.

“There was obviously a huge amount of hype at the beginning of the year. I don’t know if everyone was expecting us to be winning from race one and winning the championship in our first year.

“That wasn’t my expectation. I know that I’m coming into a new culture, a new team and it’s going to take time.”

Leclerc was disqualified after his car was found to be 1kg below the 800kg minimum weight while Hamilton’s had excessive skid wear.

Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur suggested a leaking water bottle could have accounted for some of Leclerc’s problem, which had initially been attributed to excessive tyre wear from a one-stop strategy.

“The tyres are only part of the explanation. We also lost a litre of water with Charles’ drink (bottle) leaking. The loss of weight is always an addition of many small factors,” he told L’Equipe.

The Frenchman said Ferrari were playing with fine margins as they fought to match leaders McLaren on performance.

“The aim of the game in F1 is to push yourself to the limit of all parameters, everywhere. To get to the last gram of weight, to get to the last tenth of a millimetre of the skid, to get to the last millimetre of wing deformation.

“So it’s certain that the more pressure you’re under, the more intense the fight, the closer you need to get to these limits and the more risks you take.”

Leclerc, meanwhile, said Ferrari were not panicking yet, despite managing to accumulate only 17 championship points in the first two races of a season in which they were touted as title challengers.

“The first two races were difficult,” Leclerc told reporters on April 3. “The pace was not exactly where we expected it to be, and to lose even more points than we already did with (the disqualifications) hurt the team a lot, but I’m confident that we’ve learnt from it.”

Leclerc said there was still a major issue with the performance of the car and that Hamilton’s victory in the sprint race in China was essentially down to the skill of the former world champion.

“The performance, compared to McLaren specifically, is just not good enough,” the Monegasque added.

“So it’s not about how hard it is to extract the maximum performance out of the car. It’s just that there’s not enough performance in the car, for now.

“But little step by little step I’m hoping that we can close that gap, starting from this weekend.”

Leclerc finished third in the drivers’ championship with three race wins last season and said Ferrari were probably still in a better position than they were at a similar stage of 2024. REUTERS