Lewis Hamilton admitted to “feeling the pain” for his entire Ferrari team after the Singapore Grand Prix, having struggled with an underperforming car and a severe brake issue that derailed his race.
The Briton had been closing in on Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli for fifth before his Ferrari’s front brakes began to fail in the closing laps.
The issue forced him to drop behind teammate Charles Leclerc and narrowly defend against Fernando Alonso. Despite salvaging a seventh-place finish, a five-second penalty for exceeding track limits relegated him to eighth behind the Spaniard.
“It was an okay race, I didn’t get a great start. It was very difficult to overtake and I was kind of stuck in position,” Hamilton explained.
“At the end I was catching Kimi and then brakes gave up. You saw the spark come out of the left front and then I just had to back off to cool them down.
“When I cooled them down they came back a little bit, but still not back at the end.”
©Ferrari
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur sought to allay concerns about Hamilton’s safety, saying the situation was under control.
“In terms of safety, yes, because we adapted the pace,” Vasseur said. “It’s not that Lewis was pushing like hell in the last lap, but he was 30 seconds slower.
“In terms of safety, it was on the safe side, but not the target. The target is to be safe, but the target is not to be safe.”
Feeling the Pain
Despite the setback, Hamilton remained composed but candid about the mounting frustrations within his team as Ferrari continues to lag behind their front-running rivals, despite pushing the limits.
“Firstly, the guys are pushing so hard each weekend,” he said. “I feel pain for all the team, from catering to marketing to the engineers, who show up every weekend and they really do give absolutely everything.
“But the car we have is just not unfortunately at the level of the guys up ahead, particularly as they’ve had some upgrades and we can’t match them. We’re on the knife edge trying to get as close as we can.”
Hamilton’s words reflect a growing sense of strain inside Ferrari’s camp. The SF-25 has shown flashes of speed but continues to fall short of expectations, with reliability issues and inconsistent qualifying performances proving costly.
“In qualifying I think we’re still not extracting the full potential of the car. We didn’t in the last race and we didn’t at this race,” he admitted.
“I think there was potential for us to have been third or fourth on the grid this weekend, if we had perfected and extracted the tyre performance, and not queued at the end of the pit lane for example.
“Then the race, we were on par pace-wise at least with a couple of the guys ahead of us but obviously not quicker, quicker.
“I think if we can get our qualifying fixed, which is very, very hard to do against these very quick cars, then maybe we can get slightly better results. But ultimately we are still fighting for fourth, fifth, sixth at best.”
For now, Hamilton’s words serve as both a sobering reflection and a rallying cry. The Scuderia remains committed to fighting back – but the road ahead looks steep, and every member of the team, as Hamilton made clear, is feeling the pain.
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