Ferrari: Is Lewis Hamilton playing mind games? “Mercedes is much faster than us”
Ferrari remains the biggest threat to Kimi Antonelli heading into the British Grand Prix. Yet, despite the Red Cars securing second and third on the grid at the end of qualifying at Silverstone, Lewis Hamilton is urging caution. The pole-sitter for the Sprint Race—where he had to concede victory to Mercedes’ 19-year-old prodigy—the British Ferrari driver opted for a low-key approach at the end of the day. Or, who knows, perhaps it’s a pre-race tactic: the answer will come Sunday afternoon on the track.
“I don’t want to come across as pessimistic, but the Mercedes are much faster than us,” commented Hamilton, who was also beaten in qualifying by Leclerc as well as Antonelli. Even if we at Ferrari manage to stay on their level in the very first laps, they’ll fall away over the race distance. Compared to yesterday, it seems to me we’ve taken a step backward; I don’t feel the car quite right anymore, especially in terms of balance. The rear end tends to slide out, and we’re not perfect under braking either.”
The numbers from Antonelli’s pole position speak for themselves: 1 minute, 28 seconds, and 111 thousandths, with a 175-thousandths lead over Leclerc and 347 over Hamilton. A historic result, one that hadn’t been achieved since 1953, when Alberto Ascari was the last Italian driver to start from pole position at Silverstone. George Russell, on the other hand, had to settle for the second row, paying a price that weighs even more heavily in the title race: the Mercedes driver trails his teammate by 43 points in the overall standings.
Leclerc himself openly admitted his difficulties with the SF-26, explaining the gap he faced compared to Hamilton in Friday’s Sprint qualifying: “For a while now, I’ve realized I don’t have the same ease I had in 2025 with last year’s car. Even when I’m pushing to the limit and putting it all together, we’re talking about tenths of a second: Lewis is more often able to exploit 100% of the car’s potential.” The Monegasque driver then added: “Once I got to SQ3, I lost the car. I just don’t feel it as well as I’d like to.” These words seem at odds with the second-place grid position he secured that afternoon, but they reveal an underlying fragility that’s hard to hide.
The Silverstone weekend was also the scene of a heated exchange between the leaders of the two rival teams. Toto Wolff had openly attacked Ferrari, raising doubts about the compatibility of the updates brought by the Scuderia with the budget cap limits: “We’re a bit surprised that Ferrari is able to introduce such substantial updates. In my opinion, they’ll run out of money soon. We can’t do that; we don’t have enough leeway under the spending cap.” A dig that Ferrari team principal Vasseur fired back at in no uncertain terms: “When Red Bull or Mercedes are developing, they’re geniuses. When we do it, we’re cheating. I think we need to calm down a bit on this point.”
Antonelli’s pole position comes against the backdrop of a championship that the Bologna native is dominating with growing authority. After his victory in the Sprint race—secured with a spectacular pass on Hamilton at the start of the Hangar Straight on lap nine—the 19-year-old Mercedes driver leads the standings with 179 points, 43 points ahead of Russell and 47 ahead of Hamilton. It’s a lead he’s built race by race, and one that could grow even further on Sunday on a track that, at least on paper, seems tailor-made for his Mercedes.
