Hamilton apologizes to Ferrari for having underperformed in Bahrain qualifying

Having qualified only ninth on the grid for Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix, seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton has apologized to Ferrari for having failed to secure a more encouraging starting position.

Despite a comprehensive upgrade introduced by Ferrari for this weekend's Sakhir round, Lewis Hamilton could only qualify for ninth for Ferrari in Bahrain on Saturday.

The seven-time F1 champion said he was "really sorry" to his Ferrari team on team radio, suggesting that he has failed to do a "good enough job."

"I don't have a lot of answers for you guys, just wasn't quick today. I'm just not doing a good enough job on my side so I've got to keep improving. It's definitely not a good feeling for sure."

Elaborating on his issues, Hamilton said that he made changes to his SF25 after the practice session on Friday, but he immediately felt in the third and final practice that those modifications were not the correct ones.

The Briton then went on to apply further tweaks to his car for qualifying, but his SF25 did still not behave as he would have liked.

"It wasn’t the day I was hoping for. The changes made overnight set us back in FP3, and while we applied further setup adjustments ahead of qualifying it just didn’t come together and I also didn’t find the performance window I needed.

"Credit to Charles, who did a great job out there. On a positive note, the race pace looked promising yesterday, and with a long race ahead, there’s still an opportunity to make progress. We’ll analyse the learnings overnight and come back stronger. A big thank you to the team for their continued efforts — we’ll keep pushing," noted Hamilton.