Making changes to his Ferrari SF-25 that only his team-mate Charles Leclerc had previously trialled, Lewis Hamilton says he will “not do that again” as it made the car “worse”.

Hamilton’s Chinese Grand Prix weekend was a tale of two halves, Sprint and the Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton: I know not to do that again

On the pole for the Sprint, he won from lights to flag and even put four seconds between himself and second-placed Oscar Piastri in the final four laps such was his tyre management. Leclerc was not able to match his team-mate’s pace and finished fifth, 12s down.

Seeking to improve the SF-25 further, both drivers made changes ahead of Saturday’s qualifying but the car went in the wrong direction.

While McLaren and Mercedes found pace, Ferrari faltered with Hamilton and Leclerc down on the third row of the grid as they were roughly three-tenths off the pace.

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They crossed the line fifth and sixth on in the Grand Prix with Leclerc ahead of Hamilton, the team-mates more than 20 seconds down the road from the race-winning McLaren of Piastri.

The Ferrari duo were later disqualified when Leclerc’s SF-25 was found to be 1kg under the minimum weight during post-race inspection while Hamilton’s skid block wear was deemed to be over the permitted limit.

That though was just the final blow in an otherwise difficult Grand Prix for Hamilton, who in a weekend in which many drivers were struggling with front-left tyre wear, went with a two-stop strategy.

It didn’t pay off as the five cars ahead of him at the line, including Leclerc, made it work with a one-stopper.

“I’m glad that we tried, I’m glad that we tried something,” he told Sky F1. “I was struggling with performance.

“Basically, we had pretty decent car in the sprint, and then we made some changes, because we’re trying to move forward and improve the car, and we made quite a bit worse going into qualifying, and then it was even worse in the race.

“So unfortunate, but very, very hard to keep up with the guys ahead. But lost to learn.

“The pit stop is too long here, it’s a lot of seconds to catch up, and they were still going fast at the end, like Max was doing something similar to me, and I had much fresher tyres, so wasn’t great.”

However, the strategy wasn’t the biggest problem, it was the changes made to his SF-25 between the Sprint and qualifying.

Although Hamilton did not go into detail, he dismissed a suggestion that tweaking the car’s ride-height had led to his loss of pace.

“I don’t know who said that we lifted the car, but no,” he said. “We made some other changes mostly, as well as that, but not massively, it’s like small amounts.

“But all the pieces together made it quite a bit worse.”

“Charles tested something in Bahrain, and I hadn’t tested it but we both went that way, and it was mad,” he added with a laugh. “I know not to do that again.”

Former F1 driver turned Sky pundit Karun Chandhok agrees the strategy was not the problem, it was Hamilton’s loss of pace compared to the Sprint that ultimately cost him in the Grand Prix.

“Formula One is constantly evolving, and you have to react to what the conditions are on the day,” he said of Ferrari’s decision to change the setup of the cars ahead of qualifying.

Going on to explain that the amount of rubber on the newly-resurfaced track was “completely different” to Saturday’s Sprint, he added: “Really, the other thing is, yesterday he had free air, he started at the front. His tyres were in the best condition, and he was in imperious form, like the Lewis Hamilton we’ve seen in the past.

“But at no point today did he look like he had any real pace. I don’t think the strategy was the issue there for him. He said himself, he just didn’t have the pace of Charles Leclerc.

“Now, other teams might say that flexi wing on the front of Charles’ car may have helped him. Ferrari obviously so no, he was losing, what do they say? 30 points of downforce, which is a significant amount. But yeah, we’ll debate that another day.”

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