Lewis Hamilton reveals 'heart sunk' moment as Ferrari suffer car 'flip'

Lewis Hamilton has revealed that his "heart sank" when he noticed where he was ahead of his final qualifying lap at Zandvoort, with Ferrari's SF-26 having "flipped" since practice.

The seven-time world champion endured a lonely Sprint and was looking set for a shocking qualifying, as he found himself in eighth at the start of his last lap.

Thankfully, Hamilton put a good lap together to qualify in fifth at the Dutch Grand Prix, directly ahead of Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc.

It has been a difficult weekend for Ferrari, who had come out of the blocks well in practice before lacking pace in every session that followed.

According to Hamilton, small changes made to the car made it turn "on its head", before further adjustments ahead of qualifying brought it back into a better window.

Discussing being able to improve to fifth on his final lap, Hamilton told Sky F1: "Yeah, I'm grateful that I was able to because I think I was P8 or something. My heart sunk at that moment. But a much different session, a much different car."

"We started off practice, the car felt great and it was consistent. But of course, there's always areas that you feel like you can improve. 

"So we made subtle changes to try and fix those improvements, and it made it flip the car on its head, and it was horrible through Sprint qualifying, and then all through the sprint race, I just had no confidence in the balance, and we made all these changes into qualifying. 

"So I was in a new car again, a new balance again, which I'm much happier with. But trying to progress with it, learning it, and only really in, like, six laps was a challenge. 

"But also, all the Mercedes [powered cars] are up ahead, and we know that we have a bit of a deficit on power. So I think tomorrow, I think our race pace should be better, and I think, as I said, the car is better for us."