Lewis Hamilton: Ferrari losing a ‘lot of time’ to Mercedes due to engine

Lewis Hamilton has said Ferrari’s gap to Mercedes is mainly due to a deficit in power unit performance after he qualified fourth for Saturday’s Chinese Grand Prix sprint race.

The seven-time champion’s best lap was over 0.6 seconds off his former teammate George Russell, who secured pole for Mercedes in Friday’s sprint qualifying ahead of teammate Kimi Antonelli and McLaren’s Lando Norris in third.

Hamilton believes Ferrari’s car is a match for Mercedes’ in the corners but is losing significant performance due to a lack of power on the straights.

“The car generally felt great, but I think it is on the straights,” Hamilton said. “It’s a lot of time to be losing. So, yeah, we have a lot of work to do.

“We really have to push so hard back in Maranello to improve on power. It was something that I think we were conscious of last year, that we thought that Mercedes started earlier than the rest of us, which they did last time as well [in 2014].

“So they’ve done a fantastic job, and we’ve got to step up. We’ve got to push to be able to close that gap.

“I think car-wise, the car feels great. I think we can compete with them corners, but when you’re down on power, it’s just the way it is.”

Hamilton’s Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc said he lost 0.5 seconds on the long straight between Turn 13 and Turn 14 due to a suspected issue with battery deployment.

After challenging Russell for the lead in the first 12 laps of the opening round in Australia, Leclerc is hopeful Ferrari will be closer to Mercedes in Saturday’s sprint race.

“It doesn’t really change the picture from where we are,” he said. “I think in the race, we should be relatively a bit stronger than where we were now in qualifying. However, Mercedes seems to be still a step ahead.

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“In qualifying, for some reason, the Mercedes power unit finds a lot of lap time. We don’t quite find that amount of lap time just yet in qualifying, but in the race, we are closer. So I’m so hopeful we can come back tomorrow.”

Despite running its novel ‘Macarena’ rear wing in Friday’s practice session, Ferrari opted against using the innovation in sprint qualifying.

The wing features an upper element that rotates through 180 degrees when straight-line mode is activated, turning the top flap of the wing upside down.

“I don’t really know why we went back on it,” Hamilton said of the decision to run Ferrari’s more conventional design in sprint qualifying.

“I think we rushed it to get it here, and it was not supposed to be on the cars until I think it was race four or five, or something like that.

“So they did a great job to rush it here. We only had two of them, and it was maybe a little bit premature, so we took it off. The car was still great, and we’ll work to try and bring it back when it’s ready.”