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Lewis Hamilton's "zero positives" Saudi Arabian Grand Prix represents an early nadir in his Ferrari Formula 1 tenure - and he's worried the rest of the 2025 season might not be much better.
Hamilton was a distant second-best to team-mate Charles Leclerc all through the Jeddah weekend, with a gap that can't be explained just by his lack of affinity for this track (where he was the inaugural race winner in 2021) during the ground-effect era that started in 2022.
Leclerc was 31 seconds ahead of Hamilton at the finish, largely by virtue of having eked out his first stint on medium tyres while Hamilton struggled to protect his starting set.
That 31-second gap was the biggest between any two team-mates that finished the race on the same lap. And for the only team-mate pairing that finished on different laps, Lance Stroll would've been a projected 22-23 seconds back from Fernando Alonso had he got to do lap 50.
Hamilton told Sky F1 "there wasn't one second" he was comfortable in the car during the Jeddah race, which he finished seventh, adding: "Clearly the car is capable of being P3. Charles did a great job today. So I can't blame it on the car."
He struck a similar note in his session with the written press, saying there was "zero" positive to take away.
"Nothing positive from today. Except for Charles finishing on the podium, which is great for the team.
"[On my end] it was horrible. It was horrible. Not enjoyable at all. I was just sliding around. First stint, massive understeer, car not turning. And then massive deg. And then the second stint, slightly better balance but still just no pace. Yeah, pretty bad."
Hamilton's situation at Ferrari has turned dramatically from the high of winning the sprint at Shanghai last month and he said he "doesn't have an answer" for why the Shanghai sprint was such a success and, as it stands right now, such an outlier.
"Struggling to feel the car underneath me. But there's no particular thing. There's nothing to say 'hey, this is the issue'."
Leclerc comparison
While Ferrari's performance overall has left a lot to be desired in 2025, in the intra-team battle the pendulum has swung hard towards Leclerc since that Shanghai sprint - and it was Leclerc who, on the back of his own dismay after Jeddah qualifying, capitalised on the SF-25's strong race pace on Sunday.
"I mean, he's been driving this car for a long time, so he definitely knows it really well," said Hamilton when asked whether there was anything he could pick up on that Leclerc was doing differently.
"There's plenty in the data, for sure.
"I mean, honestly, like, it doesn't look massively different in the data. Just... I go slower through the corners."
He also said: "We do have slightly different set-ups, I have to look and see whether that set-up is the way the car likes to be. Yeah, him and his side are definitely obviously doing a better job."
A whole year of 'pain'?
More worryingly for himself and Ferrari, Hamilton repeatedly conveyed a lack of confidence that he can fundamentally change the picture this year.
"In qualifying it's [a question of] me extracting performance. In the race today, I tried everything, and the car just didn't want to go quicker," he summed up.
He said he didn't expect the upcoming weekend off to make much of a difference. "I think I'll struggle also in Miami. I don't know how much longer I'll struggle for but it's definitely painful."
And when asked whether he was potentially set up for more weeks and even months of "pain", he said: "At the moment there's no fix. So ... this is how it's going to be for the rest of the year. It's going to be painful."
There was optimism ahead of his switch from Mercedes to Ferrari that the Scuderia's cars in this era of F1 rules would be a better natural fit for him, and it was borne out in the earliest stages of the season.
But Hamilton described the ground effect era as "the worst" when asked by The Race, though he said "I really don't know" when asked if there was a fundamental incompatibility between himself and these cars.
F1 is debuting a new ruleset next year, and Hamilton's contract covers at least one season of those rules.
"I don't know anything about next year's car, if I'm going to be honest," he said when asked whether 2026 at least would be a reprieve. "I'm not spending any time to think about it.
"Let's hope [it will be]. Less ground effect, let's hope things shift a little bit."
