Lewis Hamilton has lost his qualifying “superpower”, with David Coulthard believing that is his biggest problem at the moment.

Following on from last year’s qualifying defeat to George Russell, only his second head-to-head loss in his 18 years on the grid, Hamilton trails his new team-mate Charles Leclerc 3-1 in his first season with Ferrari.

Lewis Hamilton has lost ‘one of his superpowers’

He suffered his latest defeat to the Monegasque driver in Bahrain where he was a massive six-tenths behind at the line. It meant that while Leclerc lined up on the front of the grid, elevated a position by George Russell’s penalty, Hamilton was only ninth.

Speaking to the media, including PlanetF1.com, after the session, he said: “I’m just not doing a good enough job on my side so I’ve just got to keep improving. It’s definitely not a good feeling, for sure.”

Quizzed on what he could do to improve his pace, he replied: “I really don’t know. I don’t have a lot of answers for you guys, I just wasn’t quick.”

But whatever the reason, Coulthard says the car is just not “talking” to Hamilton and it has robbed him of one of his “superpowers”, qualifying.

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The seven-time World Champion holds the record for the most pole positions in Formula 1, 103, and while he did add a Sprint pole to his tally in Shanghai, in Grand Prix qualifying his best showing was a P5 in China.

“It’s interesting,” Coulthard told Channel 4. “Charles is very questioning of strategy from in the cockpit.

“He wanted to go on what I think was a one-stop strategy, or maybe it was actually contrary tyres, they won’t give us that information, of course.

“I think the fact that Lewis is quite buoyant is because he went forward in the race. He raced well, that’s never been in doubt.

“What is his problem right now, and he can explain as he eloquently does and as to all the issues that are not making the car talk to him, but he’s got to qualify better to state the obvious.

“It seems so difficult to say about a seven-time World Champion, because that was one of his superpowers in the past.”

Having spent the last 12 years racing Mercedes Formula 1 cars and only ever using Mercedes power in his 18-year career until F1 2025, Hamilton told the media including PlanetF1.com that the Ferrari felt “alien” to him.

As such, he’s having to adjust his driving style to the car while also learning how Ferrari go about things.

“It just feels so alien, it really does feel so alien,” he said of Ferrari’s F1 2025 challenger.

“Sometimes I think we all [as drivers] get stuck in our ways, very stuck, ‘I need to keep driving the way I’ve been driving, just make the car come to me a bit’, and that’s not working.

“So I’m adjusting myself to the car, and also just the way the tools that they use, it just drives so much differently.”

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