Conceding qualifying has been Ferrari’s big weakness this season, Lewis Hamilton says Ferrari will trial “some ideas” in Monaco to improve their one-lap pace.

Ferrari have managed just one front grid slot in nine qualifying sessions in F1 2025, with Hamilton winning the Sprint in China having started on pole position.

Could Ferrari snatch a surprise pole position in Monaco?

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

That is the total of the Scuderia’s qualifying, and race, success.

The SF-25’s poor qualifying pace, which team principal Fred Vasseur has put down to “tyre preparation” that’s meant Ferrari “can’t extract the potential of the soft tyre in qualifying”, hurt them at Imola where Hamilton and Charles Leclerc suffered a humiliating double Q2 elimination on Italian soil.

Although the drivers rebounded in the Grand Prix, where Hamilton was fourth and Leclerc P6, qualifying is a worry for the team heading into Monaco where Saturday has often determined the race result.

The race has been won from pole position 32 times in 70 races, while only 10 times has a driver who started lower than third taken the chequered flag.

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Hamilton headed to Maranello in the wake of the Imola race as he and Ferrari sought possible solutions to their qualifying troubles.

He confirmed they’ll trial those ideas in Saturday’s all-important session, even though Monaco isn’t perhaps the best place for experiments.

“So I was in the simulator on Monday, I was in nice and early in the morning,” he told the media, including PlanetF1.com.

“It’s really incredible to see the engineers and the mechanics, it does not stop. They go home on the Sunday night, and then they are in the factory the next day. It just does not stop, they’re churning through the data.

“There’s lots of lots of positives as we said last weekend to take from it. There’s still areas that we need to improve on. Qualifying has been our big weakness this year.

“We’re not extracting the performance from the tyres and that’s something we are working on. I had some ideas, the team had some ideas, and so we will try those this weekend.

“It’s not the best place to try those things but we will try to make a step in qualifying. It’s a natural progression over the year.

“I’m feeling more at home in the team, things work differently here. They’ve never had anyone like me here, and so it’s been challenging on both sides.

“But we’re really finding harmony I think in the way that we’re moving forwards. I hope that that starts to reflect.”

For Hamilton, Monaco, like every other race weekend this season, will be a new experience as he races in F1’s crown jewel in red.

“Every weekend is something new,” said the 40-year-old. “Like last weekend was the first time I’ve been to a European race, seeing the truck, finding my room, getting accustomed to a new layout.

“This weekend walking into the garage it’s all red, it’s the first time I’ve been in Monaco… I’ve never been in the Ferrari garage in Monaco. I’ve always walked past it, I always wondered what it’d be like to be in the team. I just didn’t see it until now and it’s awesome.

“I have for years always wondered what a Ferrari would feel like around this track. Even my first year, I think the Ferraris were very strong. Obviously Charles in the last few years has been rapid here.

“You can see the car works a lot different to what I had driven in the past. How that reflects this weekend I don’t know but I’m definitely excited to experience it.”

His team-mate Leclerc, chasing a second successive Monaco win, hopes those ideas pay off this weekend.

“I hope we’ll discover something new about our car that we haven’t seen yet since the beginning of the season,” said the Monegasque driver. “Until we get to qualifying and until that lap in Q3, you have the hope of doing something magic because you don’t really know where you stand.

“So, I will have my hopes until the end. So, I still have hopes that we can reproduce what happened last year.

“Obviously, it’s still very fresh in my mind to come back in this paddock. The last time I was there, we won, and it was a very special moment for me.”

Leclerc will line up on the grid on Sunday fifth in the Drivers’ Championship with 61 points, eight ahead of Hamilton. The team-mates, though, are a long way off from championship leader Oscar Piastri’s 146 points.

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