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The Bahrain Grand Prix 2025 is officially underway with the practice day on Friday. As Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari has undergone an update ahead of the start of round 4, therefore, a major attention was on how the car of the 7-time World Champion will fare after the modification. And thankfully, Hamilton is satisfied with the working of the car. But Hamilton's teammate Charles Leclerc is not on the same page with him.
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Lewis Hamilton Satisfied with the Upgrade
“The upgrade’s definitely working,” he told the official F1 channel after first practice. “So a big, big thank you to everyone back home for working so hard on bringing the upgrades because it’s never an easy thing. It’s a lot of work that goes on in the wind tunnel and a lot work that goes into fabricating and putting together these floors.
“It’s just good to see that we’re taking steps forward. We’re trying to now extract more from it, I hope that we can make the right steps overnight to tomorrow.”
Hamilton reported that his car felt "pretty decent" after setup changes in the second practice session, but he's still working to achieve consistent performance over a lap.
“I’m just trying to pull the laps together, having a car that’s easy to drive and that’s consistent through the lap at the moment,” he said. “It’s a bit different between low, medium and high [speed corners] as you often have so we’re just trying to finesse it, trying to tweak it and then make sure that we have good long-run pace because that’s where you need to be strong here, particularly.”
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Charles Leclerc Cuts Out a Concerned Figure
In the second practice session, Hamilton ranked eighth, a second behind Oscar Piastri's McLaren. His teammate Charles Leclerc was fourth, half a second off the pace, raising concerns about closing the gap to McLaren.
“I’m trying to push into a direction that allows me to extract a bit more out of the car, but to be honest, the potential of the car remains the same and we’re just not fast enough,” he said.
“When we look at the McLaren, they are just on another planet for now. It’s annoying, but it’s the way it is, and it actually motivates me to try and close that gap as soon as possible. But they are incredibly fast.
“It’s been a tricky session because it’s so much warmer than the test and obviously you go into a session expecting the grip that you had at the test and it’s completely different. So we’ve got to readjust the car and there will be a lot of work during the night to try and turn the situation around more.”
Leclerc confirmed Ferrari’s floor changes worked, “so that’s positive, but unfortunately the gap to McLaren is still too big.”
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