Lewis Hamilton confirmed Ferrari are running the SF-25 higher than they ideally want to after the Briton was disqualified from the previous race in China.

Hamilton crossed the line in sixth place at the Shanghai circuit only to be disqualified from the official classification due to excessive skid block wear.

Lewis Hamilton: Obviously not good enough from my side

Found to be below the permitted minimum, Ferrari’s breach of Article 3.5.9 of the FIA Formula One Technical Regulations raised questions about the sensitivity of Ferrari’s 2025 challenger.

“So maybe they have a car that’s very sensitive to ride height in terms of aero performance,” theorised former Aston Martin strategist Bernie Collins. “All of these cars are because they’re all ground-effect cars, but maybe it is more sensitive than others.

“If they have got what we would call a ‘peaky’ ride height, which means there’s a very small optimum ride height that you can have a good aerodynamic platform in, that is an issue for a car.”

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Hamilton wasn’t able to rebound from the disappointment when he took to the Suzuka circuit in qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix.

Although the seven-time World Champion did progress to Q3, he finished down in eighth place where he was more than six-tenths behind pole-sitter Max Verstappen.

He confirmed that Ferrari had been forced to sacrifice downforce by raising the car’s ride height, which he called a “knock-on” from Shanghai.

“Yes,” he confirmed to Sky F1, “we are running higher than we would like, but I don’t know if everyone else the same boat in that respect.

“Particularly obviously after the last race, we’re a bit higher than we want to be. It’s usually the knock-on effect from a weekend like we had before.”

Three-tenths down on his team-mate Charles Leclerc’s time, Hamilton also revealed that he had gone with a different setup to his team-mate.

“Charles did an amazing lap today,” he added. “For me, we went in different directions with the setup. I had a lot of understeer and couldn’t dial it out throughout qualifying.

“Obviously not good enough from my side, P8 is not great. I was happy to get into Q3, really tight battle out there with everyone. I just didn’t get great laps in Q3.”

But there is a silver lining, or better to say a dark cloud, on the horizon as there is a 40 per cent chance of ‘moderate showers’ during Sunday’s Grand Prix.

Hamilton hopes to capitalise on that.

“I’m excited, I love I generally love the rain. It’s going to be tricky, but usually when you have a qualifying like I’ve just had, you hope for rain. So I hope that it stays,” he said.

Jacques Villeneuve, one of Sky’s pundits for the Suzuka race, explained that raising the ride height makes the car tricky to set up as it narrows the working window.

“It makes the car difficult to drive,” explained the 1997 World Champion. “I mean, Charles Leclerc managed to get a lap in, Lewis made some mistakes.

“But it puts the car in a window where they get in and out of that aero window just a little bit too high. When they hit that edge, they get out and it makes the car difficult to drive.”

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