Leclerc admits surprise after Hamilton stormed to British GP Sprint pole for Ferrari

The Monegasque driver, who witnessed his underwhelming run of form in comparison to Hamilton continue through qualifying for the Saturday shootout, was quizzed about what he was missing in comparison to his Scuderia Ferrari teammate, and where the seven-time world champion was gaining the upper hand to trigger such a strong surge in performance.

In response, Leclerc said he is closely analysing the data but acknowledged that he currently lacks confidence in the car, which he believes is contributing to his contrasting form compared to Hamilton. “Well, that's what I'm looking at at the moment. Obviously, it's been quite a while that I’ve realised I didn’t have the ease that I had last year with last year’s car. And even when I push, whenever I put things together, we speak about hundreds, and Lewis is more often at 100% of the potential of the car, which I'm not,” he explained.

“So I've got to work on everything, really. But I think most importantly, it's just the feeling with this car. When you don't get quite the feeling, then it's difficult to extract the lap time and to have the confidence every Saturday going into qualifying, in this case, it's a Friday, and get to the limit of the car, which I'm struggling with. I can be consistent to be at my 100% in Q1 and Q2; I was close to it. I was quite confident for Q3, but coming into Q3 I lost it. I just don't feel the car as well as I should,” Leclerc added.

When asked about the power unit performance and Hamilton’s overall showing, Leclerc admitted he and the Ferrari team were surprised by the Briton’s pace, revealing the team had expected a larger gap to the front-running cars throughout the session.

Hamilton ultimately secured the Sprint pole with a lap time of 1:28.376, while Leclerc finished almost four-tenths adrift, lining up on the second row alongside Max Verstappen.

Earlier, George Russell also admitted he was surprised by the pace of both Hamilton and Ferrari, saying he had not expected them to emerge as the benchmark at Silverstone.

The Mercedes driver noted that Ferrari had struggled with power unit performance and energy management in recent races. While he has long regarded Ferrari’s chassis as one of the strongest on the grid, he said their pace this weekend was unexpected and difficult to fully explain. Russell added that the Mercedes car also felt better than anticipated around Silverstone, particularly through the high-speed corners, which further contributed to his surprise at the final result.