Lewis Hamilton calls for Ferrari SF-26 investigation after Monaco GP qualifying

Lewis Hamilton says Ferrari “really need to look into” the cause of its mysterious loss of pace ahead of qualifying at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Ferrari was widely regarded as the favourite for victory in Monte Carlo this weekend due to the high-downforce characteristics of the SF-26 car.

Lewis Hamilton: Ferrari SF-26 ‘deep dive’ required after Monaco GP qualifying

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The Scuderia dominated Friday’s running with Hamilton and teammate Charles Leclerc leading a Ferrari one-two in FP1 and FP2 respectively.

However, Mercedes mounted an impressive resurgence on Saturday with Kimi Antonelli setting pole position.

Hamilton could only manage third, one spot behind Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, with Leclerc forced to settle for fourth after hitting the barrier on his final lap.

Appearing in the post-qualifying press conference in Monaco, Hamilton admitted “the car was really in a bad place” entering the session after Ferrari “took a bit of a step back” with changes overnight.

And he said the team will take a “deep dive” to understand what went wrong.

Asked if P3 was the maximum for Ferrari on Saturday, he told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets: “Yes. Yes, unfortunately today. Big congrats to Kimi.

“We were looking really strong throughout the weekend and it’s always so much fun driving around this track.

“I felt great in the car and I think we made progress yesterday. Then coming into today, we took a bit of a step back.

“We lost some performance overnight and then going into qualifying the car was really in a bad place.

“If you see Q1, I was seven tenths down or something like that and had to make huge adjustments to the wing in order to try and rebalance the car for some reason.

“I’m not quite sure exactly what went wrong – we’ll deep dive into it.

“But I think ultimately we lost the chance to fight for the front row going into quali with the balance that we ended up with.

“So it was a bit of a surprise, but I’m still grateful.

“I got everything I could out of it at the end with the balance that I had.

“The car was on the edge, I was on the edge as much as I could be.”

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Asked if pole position would have been possible if Ferrari had not gone the wrong way with setup, Hamilton replied: “I don’t think we went the wrong way with setup. That’s the thing.

“I think we made the tiniest tweaks – a millimetre here, a millimetre there. The tiniest tweaks.

“But we really need to look into what switched because the car was completely different to what it was before.

“I didn’t have any rear end for some reason when I’d had a good balance for most of the weekend.

“With the pace that we had yesterday, I think we could have been closer.

“These guys really started putting out some amazing times at the end, so fair play to them.

“We’ll push hard tomorrow, hopefully we can keep up. And who knows? Maybe we could have a really good start.”

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