Charles on the second row, Lewis on the fourth

Scuderia Ferrari HP drivers Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton will start the Japanese Grand Prix from the second and fourth rows of the grid. As expected, qualifying at Suzuka was very closely contested and the Monegasque got everything out of his SF-25 to go fourth fastest, behind Max Verstappen in the Red Bull and the McLaren duo of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. On his fastest lap, Lewis’ second sector was not the best and that left him in eighth place. There are several unknown factors relating to tomorrow’s race, but there are also plenty of opportunities, which is always the case when rain is expected. Added to this is the fact that no driver has managed to do proper long runs because of the many red flags in free practice. Even if the race could be run completely or partially in the dry, it’s not clear how the cars will manage their tyres, especially if it remains relatively cool. On this high speed track, the wind could also play an important role.

Q3. The Ferraris got to the final phase relatively comfortably, with Charles and Lewis putting in very similar lap times to each other and to those ahead of them. They each had two sets of new Softs: at his first attempt, Charles posted an excellent 1’27”299, while Lewis did a 1’27”668, which put them provisionally third and sixth. On their second attempt, the Monegasque did not improve and dropped to fourth behind Lando Norris, while Hamilton got down to a 1’27”610, which meant he was eighth.

Scenarios to prepare. It is going to be a long night for the engineers as the weather forecast is uncertain and so there are many scenarios for which to prepare. The 53 lap, 307.471 kilometre race starts tomorrow at 14 local (7 CEST), and it could start on a wet track, or be run entirely in the rain, or even with a mix of dry and damp conditions, or be a straightforward dry race. Total concentration and rapid adaptability to the conditions could make the difference.

Charles Leclerc #16

I put everything into my best lap in Q3 and there was nothing more we could have got out of the car today. P4 is not a satisfying result and we have to keep working to close the gap to McLaren and Red Bull, with the target of getting back to winning races. As a whole however, it has been a positive weekend so far. I feel a lot more comfortable in the car after the changes we made to the set-up yesterday, which also gave me confidence behind the wheel going into Qualifying.  I’m looking forward to seeing how it will feel in the race tomorrow, and depending on the weather conditions, to test this approach over a race distance.

Lewis Hamilton #44

It was a challenging Saturday for us. We made some changes to the car ahead of qualifying which, unfortunately, didn’t deliver the improvements we were aiming for. The car felt more balanced in the earlier stages, but I experienced significant understeer in Q3 which led to a couple of small mistakes that cost us. 

This result isn’t a true reflection of the car’s potential. There’s performance to be found and the team has been working incredibly hard behind the scenes. We’ll analyse the data overnight and do everything we can to come back stronger in the race.

Fred Vasseur Team Principal

It was a decent quali for Charles, even if I feel we were in the game from the start and then didn’t put everything together in Q3. Lewis struggled a bit more there, after having a similar pace to Charles in Q1 and Q2. McLaren is still a step ahead, so we must continue to push to develop the car more.  

It is difficult to predict what we can do in the race, as the forecast is for rain, at least overnight, which could be our first experience of a wet track this weekend. Even if it’s dry, but the wind changes direction, here at Suzuka that means we will find a very different track.

Overall, I feel we made a step ahead in qualifying and we must continue to work in this direction in the race to reach the targets we have set ourselves.