Lewis Hamilton battling fundamental Ferrari issues after Japan shocker

Lewis Hamilton has explained how the performance of Ferrari's F1 car is being hampered in Japan as a result of his China disqualification.

Hamilton's sixth-place was expunged from the record books in Shanghai after his SF-25 was found to have worn the skid-block more than the rules allow, with Ferrari having to raise the ride height at Suzuka to prevent the block from hitting the track and wearing itself out. 

By the nature of the ground-effects cars, a higher ride-height costs performance with Hamilton labouring to eighth place on the grid for the Japanese GP, his worst qualifying at Suzuka since ninth for McLaren in 2012.

The seven-time world champion also explained how he was battling against understeer throughout the session, as team-mate Charles Leclerc banked fourth on the grid, some 0.411s faster.

"It is obviously not good enough from my side, to qualify eighth, but I was happy to get into Q3 and it was a really tight battle out there, I just didn't get great laps in Q3," Hamilton told Sky Sports F1. 

"Yes, we are higher than what we would like, but I don't know if everyone is in the same boat in that respect, but particularly after the last race, we're a bit higher than we would want to be, that's usually the knock-on effect from the weekend like we had before. 

"Charles did an amazing job. We went in different set-up directions, and for me, I just had a lot of understeer that I could not dial out throughout qualifying."

With rain forecast for race day, Hamilton added that "if you have a qualifying like I've just had, you hope for rain."