Hamilton fears from possible early exit in Jeddah qualifying

Having struggled for outright pace across the Friday's practice sessions at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton fears that he might face an early exit in today's qualifying session in Jeddah.

In the opening practice at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton began on medium tyres, doing a few laps to get back in the swing of the challenging track, with times of 1’30”592 and 1’30”674, before switching to Softs with which they set their best times. The Monegasque ended up third fastest with a 1’29”309 while the Briton was eighth in 1’29”815.

The second one-hour session saw the Scuderia pair began on new Mediums before switching to Softs with which the Englishman posted a 1’29”371, 13th fastest, while his team-mate lapped in 1’28”749 on his third run to claim fourth place.

Towards the end of the session, both SF-25s were fuelled up to run in race trim as Hamilton and Leclerc completed a race simulation on the Mediums from earlier in the session. However, they were only able to complete two laps before the session was red flagged after Yuki Tsunoda crashed.

Having struggled for outright pace across the opening two practice session, Hamilton insisted that the first day of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix turned out to be a challenging one while he also suggested that reaching Q3 might be a challenge for him on Saturday.

"It was a challenging day. We’re still chasing the right balance between the front and rear axles, and I’m struggling a bit with consistency across the lap at this stage. There’s work to do tonight, but the team’s fully focused and we’ll keep pushing to find the improvements we need."

Reflecting on his problems, Hamilton said that he has been struggling to extract the most from the tyres, and his issues became more evident when he bolted on the red-walled softs.

“I think getting the tyres working today was the issue from our side. It’s nothing to do with the team, it’s just we were struggling to get the tyres working.

“Normally on Saturday it goes backwards, but there’s not a lot of backwards for me to go from where I am. Hopefully, overnight we will make some improvements to the car.

"There were a few bits through the session that felt good and just once we get to the soft tyre, it’s not there.

"We’ll make some changes overnight and hope tomorrow we can come back stronger. I don’t know. For me, I’m just seeing if I can get in the top 10 at the moment.”

His team-mate Charles Leclerc looked quick from the off in Saudi Arabia, winding up in the top three in FP1.The Monegasque then ended up fourth in the evening's one-hour session, but he left time out there after a mistake on his first flying run when the tyres were at their best.

"We are missing a bit of pace compared to the cars in front of us, but if we put everything together tomorrow it should be a close Qualifying. We all seem to be quite close, with McLaren a step ahead, but we will focus on ourselves and see what we can extract tomorrow."