Hamilton rebuilds confidence to qualify fifth at Zandvoort after troubled Friday

Lewis Hamilton qualified fifth for the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort on Saturday, turning around a weekend that had begun with a frustrating seventh-place finish in sprint qualifying — 0.624 seconds off George Russell’s sprint pole.

Hamilton attributed the improvement to a set-up overhaul Ferrari carried out in the window between the sprint race and grand prix qualifying. The seven-time world champion had asked the team to restore the feeling he had enjoyed in the single free practice session, and the changes delivered.

“I was much, much happier with the car,” Hamilton told media on Saturday evening. “The car was much better. I’m much happier with it. I’m excited for tomorrow.”

He was candid, however, about the psychological cost of the Friday setback. “When it comes to building confidence, it’s like you’re putting brick by brick, you’re putting it down, building a wall,” he said. “Knocked down that confidence that I had in FP1, didn’t have it through sprint qualifying, and then I just basically started again building.”

While Hamilton’s personal recovery was clear, the session did not represent a broader step forward for Ferrari. Charles Leclerc, who had been third in sprint qualifying — just 0.055 seconds off Russell’s time and 0.014s behind Lando Norris — dropped to sixth in grand prix qualifying.

Leclerc suggested his strong Friday showing had been partly inflated by rivals not maximising their performance, and pointed to errors in Ferrari’s power unit mode changes between Q2 and Q3 as a factor in his Saturday dip.

“I felt like yesterday they didn’t do everything perfect or the car didn’t feel quite right, whereas for me the car felt quite good yesterday so I knew maybe we had a bit less margin compared to them,” he said. “And then today we did some mistakes in changing modes, power modes from Q2 to Q3 that put me off a little bit with the feeling I had with the car.”

Leclerc was nonetheless measured in his expectations, adding that he did not believe pole position had been within reach regardless. Both Ferrari drivers indicated the car tends to perform more strongly in race trim, leaving the Scuderia cautiously optimistic heading into Sunday’s grand prix.