Lewis Hamilton explains painful issues with his Ferrari car after taking Qatar GP penalty | F1 | Sport

Lewis Hamilton took a penalty and started the Qatar Grand Prix sprint race from the pit lane on Saturday in an attempt to experiment with his car set-up, but that decision backfired as the Brit struggled to a 17th-place finish. The Ferrari racer was only ahead of Pierre Gasly, Lance Stroll and Franco Colapinto at the chequered flag, all three of whom made late pit stops.

The seven-time world champion was due to start from 18th on the grid after another miserable sprint qualifying session, but with the damage already done, Ferrari seized the opportunity to change the set-up and assess their options ahead of Grand Prix qualifying later in the day.

With no chaos to report ahead of him, Hamilton ended the opening lap ahead of only the two Alpine drivers, although he gained another spot when Stroll pitted for fresh Pirelli rubber. He was, however, unable to make up ground on Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg in an unfortunate repeat of last weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Asked by Sky Sports F1 to give a summary of the issues he was facing in the race, Hamilton said: “I’ll be here all day… yeah, I’ll be here all day! Well I mean we started from the pit lane because we wanted to explore and make some changes, they had some things they found on the simulator last night.

“So we implemented those changes, and the car was really in the wrong direction and very, very difficult for whatever reason, clearly for both of us. We just don’t have any stability, so when I say that, the rear end is not planted, so it is sliding, snapping a lot.

“Then we have bouncing, so when you’re going into corners like Turn 10, the thing starts bouncing and you have a lot of mid-corner understeer. And then you apply the steering and then it snaps, and you try and catch it. It’s different between low, medium and high [speed corners], and it’s a fight like you couldn’t believe.”

Hamilton’s struggles were also experienced by team-mate Charles Leclerc, who endured a mistake-ridden opening lap and numerous off-track excursions en route to a 13th-place finish.

“It definitely did [feel worse in the car],” he confirmed. “I have no idea how that happened from qualifying to today. The feeling has changed completely to yesterday, and I don’t really know where it is coming from, so definitely experience for tonight and see.

“But I kind of agree with Lewis that today was extremely difficult to not say worse than that. The first lap, I was struggling to keep the car on track – lost four or five positions – and then still lots of mistakes because it was extremely difficult to drive, so I don’t quite understand what happened there.”