How Lewis Hamilton's Belgium GP weekend unraveled despite Ferrari upgrades

New York Times

a day ago

SPA, Belgium — Heading into this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix, there was reason for Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari to feel optimistic.
Hamilton has been building momentum after a rollercoaster start to life with Ferrari, matching his best Sunday finishes at the Austrian GP and British GP and outqualifying teammate Charles Leclerc in three of the previous four races. This weekend, Ferrari brought a set of upgrades it hoped would boost its performance, including a new rear suspension.
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Leclerc grabbed third place on the grid for Sunday's race with an impressive final lap in Q3, outqualifying sprint race winner Max Verstappen. But Hamilton languished in a lowly 16th as his miserable Spa weekend continued.
Hamilton had already been eliminated in the first stage of a qualifying session this weekend. A spin on his final lap in sprint qualifying on Friday meant he started 18th, and only made up three places in the 15-lap race.
On Saturday, his second knockout at Spa came after a track limits breach on his final lap of the Q1 session. The lap had been good enough to advance to Q2 just one place behind Leclerc, only for the stewards to note he had put all four wheels outside the white lines at the top of the hill at Raidillon.
'Everyone does that, takes that curb,' Hamilton told reporters after the session, suggesting he was unsure if the stewards had made the right call. 'But I'm out, so…' He wasn't looking to shirk accountability for a small yet costly error — a matter of millimeters, according to team principal Fred Vasseur.
'From my side, another mistake,' Hamilton told Sky Sports. 'So I've really got to look internal. I've got to apologize to my team, because it's just unacceptable to be out in both Q1s. It's (a) very, very poor performance from myself.'
Ferrari never anticipated the upgrades at Spa would vault it into immediate contention for wins, given the massive gap to pace-setter McLaren, which also brought updates this weekend. But the hope was that the rear suspension, in particular, would soothe some of the issues Hamilton and Leclerc have dealt with this year.
'As always, and especially for our team, everything is hyped up a lot,' Leclerc said in the news conference after qualifying. 'So yes, it's an upgrade and it's a step in the right direction, but we are still speaking about very fine differences of a whole lap. It feels a little bit different, and it's going in the right direction.'
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Leclerc has previously spoken about the need for Ferrari to use 'extreme' setups to get the car into a window where it could go faster. Hamilton claimed he was trialing different setups to get the car into a sweet spot, only to gravitate more towards Leclerc's setups of late, coinciding with his uptick in results. Since the Spanish GP on June 1, Hamilton has scored 32 points and built a 40-point buffer to seventh-place Kimi Antonelli.
Leclerc suggested the car was now 'a little bit better' to find the setup window, making it easier to extract all the pace out of the car — a skill, as one of F1's best qualifiers, that has come so naturally through his career, but has been harder to unlock through 2025.
'This year, I've been struggling a little bit more to put everything together come qualifying,' Leclerc said. 'This weekend seems to be better. But we just need to prove that over multiple race weekends.'
Hamilton should not let his miserable weekend at Spa serve as too much of a setback. His shock switch to Ferrari from Mercedes, one made with a record-breaking eighth world title very much in mind, hasn't delivered the kind of performance either he nor the team would have aspired to, chiefly due to the limitations of the car and the gap that has grown to McLaren at the front.
Vasseur didn't seem concerned about Hamilton's qualifying difficulties at Spa. 'I think the struggle is not the pace,' Vasseur told F1 TV. 'He was able to have the same pace as Charles in Q1. Track limits is for a couple of millimeters. But the rule is the rule. And the lap time was deleted.
'But it's not a matter of pace or adaptation. I think he was able to do the job.'
Hamilton is a five-time winner of the Belgian GP, including last year, when he inherited victory after George Russell's disqualification. You have to go back to his debut season in 2007 for the last time he finished the race but failed to stand on the podium, crossing the line in fourth place. It's a track he loves and where he flourishes.
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A recovery from 16th on Sunday into the points will mark a good return for the Briton. Barring something remarkable (heavy rain has been floating in and out of the Sunday forecast), it's likely this will go down as another dip in this fluctuating first season with Ferrari.
'We're trying to do the best with what we have,' Hamilton said on Sky Sports. 'Obviously, everyone is working flat out back at the factory. We have had upgrades. But I think that's probably it for the rest of the year. I think the focus now, back at the factory at least, is on next year's car.
'This season has been a tricky one.'