Lewis Hamilton issues Ferrari concerning Williams claim after expensive error

Lewis Hamilton has delivered a damning indictment about Ferrari's current form in F1, after failing to reach the final stage of qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix.

The British driver slumped out of the grid-setting session in Q2, before highlighting how the Italian team is now battling Williams, not the front-running rivals the Scuderia was expected to fight this season.

With McLaren, Mercedes and the Red Bull of Max Verstappen all looking strong at the Miami International Autodrome, the Maranello-based squad looked resigned to settling for fourth quickest, but it has not been able to compete with those teams at all.

Charles Leclerc, in the other Ferrari, did make it through to Q3, but found himself out-performed by the Williams duo of Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon, slotting in directly behind the pair in eighth.

Despite his lacklustre qualifying session, Hamilton scored a strong third-place finish in the sprint, working his way up from seventh on the grid (de facto sixth after his team-mate aquaplaned into the wall and failed to start). 

However, the seven-time F1 drivers' champion explained how the strategy call to come in for slick tyres early, as the track dried, masked the underlying pace of the SF-25.

"Yeah, definitely" the 105-time grand prix winner replied to media, including RacingNews365, when it was put to him that his sprint podium must have been a confidence boost.

"It's nice, but pure pace, we're being out-qualified by the Williams, who are doing a great job - James [Vowles, Williams team principal] and his team are doing an amazing job... But pure pace, that's where we are."

Painful misjudgement

It has been a difficult start to life at Ferrari for Hamilton, who has struggled to match Leclerc for much of the campaign, but the pair were much closer during qualifying in Florida.

Although the British driver will line up P12, there were less than six-hundredths of a second separating them in Q2.

When reflecting on that, the 40-year-old revealed a costly mistake made by Ferrari, a blunder that heavily contributed to him being dumped out the grid-setting session early.

"Charles was fortunate to get through with that [effort in Q2]," he recounted. "I think he did a new tyre [run], so just got it through.

"I had an extra new tyre [set available, too]. We should have used that."