Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari woes have continued at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, with a handful of radio messages during FP3 highlighting those struggles.

The struggles have caused Sky Sports F1 pundit Martin Brundle to note just how uncomfortable the Briton looks behind the wheel of his SF-25.

Lewis Hamilton ‘uncomfortable’ as Ferrari woes continue

After making his much-hyped move to Scuderia Ferarri at the start of this season, Lewis Hamilton has struggled to adapt.

The highlight of the year thus far was a pole-to-victory conversion in the sprint race during China’s F1 weekend, but that has been something of an outlier when compared to the remainder of Hamilton’s season, where every position has to be hard fought.

Hamilton seems to be aware of the issue. After FP2, when asked what he felt was possible in qualifying, he responded, “Normally Saturday goes backwards, but there’s not a lot of backwards for me to go from where I am.”

While he only managed to secure a time worthy of 12th place on the timing charts in FP2, it was at least better than FP3’s 13th position — but qualifying could be another story, particularly after the final practice session of the weekend highlighted just how far the seven-time champion has to go.

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Perhaps the biggest shock came when Hamilton radioed race engineer Riccardo Adami to ask, “How far am I down on the sectors?” during FP3.

The response was not one that the driver would have been hoping for.

“Seven tenths first sector, four tenths second sector,” Adami replied. “And we aborted the last sector.”

Hamilton could only muster one word in response: “Jeez…”

Later in the session, he told the team, “I just don’t have the grip, mate. I don’t know,” to which he was told to “do a double cool” before returning to the pits.

For those who witnessed Hamilton’s era of domination with Mercedes, the driver’s struggles feel all the more pronounced, leading Sky F1 pundit Martin Brundle to lament just how poor Hamilton’s session had been.

“There’s been weekends — entire grand prix events — where he wouldn’t have lost seven tenths to anybody, let alone in one sector,” Brundle said after the conclusion of FP3.

“No wonder he was shocked by it.”

Echoing Hamilton’s Friday sentiment that Saturdays tend to see him going “backwards,” Brundle continued, “I think he’s going the wrong way on the setup of the car for him, and he’s clearly got to find his way with that car and his engineer.

“But Lewis is not seven tenths off in the first sector of this track, and the car’s just not with him, he’s not confident in it, it’s not working, and it’s almost uncomfortable viewing and listening.”

Of course, these issues are not wholly stemming from Hamilton. His teammate Charles Leclerc may be better able to adapt to the SF-25, but he’s also struggling to find pace.

During FP3, Leclerc radioed he team to report, “This, I feel, is the limit of the car. I cannot go faster in the corners. It’s just sliding from all four tyres.”

Clearly, something is not clicking for the Ferrari drivers this year.

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