When he returns to Monza next season as a Ferrari driver, Lewis Hamilton will be passionately welcomed by the tifosi. After qualifying sixth for the Italian Grand Prix, the “furious” seven-time champion displayed his own raw emotion, declaring that his team “deserve better” than he gave them.
Hamilton holds the records for most pole positions and is one of Formula 1’s all-time greats over a single lap. Yet this is now the 12th time in 16 rounds he has been out-qualified by team-mate George Russell, who will start Sunday’s race in third. The 39-year-old was less than a tenth of a second slower than the sister Mercedes, but that margin was enough for a three-place gap on the grid.
“Absolutely furious. I could have been on pole,” Hamilton said after qualifying. “I could have been at least on the front row. I didn’t do the job in the end… No one to blame but myself. Qualifying has been my weakness for a [while] now and I can’t figure it out. I’ll keep trying.”
Hamilton’s ire was in contrast to compatriot Lando Norris, who boosted his championship hopes by taking a second consecutive pole position. His title rival Max Verstappen could only put his Red Bull seventh on a track where overtaking is tough.
Hamilton’s dejection came on a day when Mercedes announced 18-year-old prodigy Andrea Kimi Antonelli as his replacement for 2025. In his unveiling on Saturday morning, Antonelli himself said Hamilton was impossible to replace, but the Briton believes his qualifying on Saturday suggested the opposite.
‘We have a good race car’
“We have a good race car, the team have done an amazing job this weekend,” he said. “The car has been feeling much better than the last race and the team deserve better. Maybe they’ll get that with Kimi.”
For Hamilton, the difference between now and six months ago is that the penalty for a poor qualifying session comes with a greater penalty. The Mercedes is once again a race-winning car after more than two years in the doldrums – but he is leaving the team for Ferrari next year. The Scuderia’s hopes of a home victory on Sunday look distant. Carlos Sainz took pole for them here last year but could only manage fifth on Saturday, one place behind team-mate Charles Leclerc.
One man with few struggles in qualifying is Norris, who took his third pole in four races and fourth in seven despite what he called a “s—” second lap in Q3, which even drew an apology. “My bad,” he said on the team radio. “OK mate, I’m sorry your shit lap was good enough for pole,” replied deadpan race engineer Will Joseph.
Norris needs to close in on Verstappen
After victory last Sunday at Zandvoort, Norris trails Verstappen by 70 points. With just nine rounds (plus three sprint races) remaining this year, the Briton needs to start taking bigger chunks out of the Dutchman’s lead – it was eight points last week – to put up a genuine title challenge in a McLaren that is now the class of the field on a variety of tracks. Sunday’s race presents a perfect opportunity for that. If Norris and Verstappen finish where they start, the championship margin could reduce to as little as 50 points, depending on where the fastest lap bonus point goes.
Red Bull’s recent downward trend continued with Verstappen’s worst qualifying performance of the season. He was nearly 0.7sec off Norris’s lap time and struggled for ultimate pace and grip on both of his Q3 runs. “The car is very difficult to drive and find a good balance,” Verstappen said. “If you have one issue and try to fix that, then there is another issue. It’s not very driveable, let’s put it like that.”
The crowd would have loved nothing better than to see a Ferrari on pole position – as they did last year with Sainz – but in truth they have looked just a little too far off the ultimate pace of McLaren. “The car is not turning at all, again,” Leclerc said after his second Q2 run. Things improved slightly in Q3 but a home podium might be the best they can hope for this year.
