Leclerc and Hamilton qualify fourth and fifth as Ferrari's Austin pace advantage evaporates in Q3

Ferrari arrived at Circuit of the Americas as the team to beat after topping every practice session at the United States Grand Prix, yet the Scuderia could not convert that advantage into a front-row start, with Charles Leclerc qualifying fourth and Lewis Hamilton fifth as Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli claimed a surprise pole ahead of Max Verstappen.

Leclerc had led both Friday sessions, and Hamilton topped FP3 after Leclerc’s quickest lap was deleted, giving the impression that Ferrari was primed to challenge for pole. Instead, the team’s pace plateaued through Q3, leaving both drivers to search for answers.

Two issues emerged from Ferrari’s analysis: a straight-line speed deficit relative to its rivals, and a persistent struggle to generate sufficient tyre temperature on a single flying lap. The car showed genuine strength in low-speed corners and through the high-speed Turns 16-19 complex, but could not respond when the session reached its critical final stage.

Leclerc attributed much of the problem to a drop in track temperature between Q2 and Q3. The Ferrari chassis is engineered to keep tyre temperatures relatively cool in race conditions — a trait that aids long-run pace but makes it harder to load the rubber with the heat required for a single qualifying lap.

“I feel like today it’s a qualifying where we had the potential in the car, but the car also includes tyres and in Q3 unfortunately we were not in the right place,” Leclerc said. “It was like one or two degrees less in Q3 and for me it was a huge difference; I just really struggled in the out-lap, I was sliding quite a lot already from the out-lap and that made it very difficult after that.”

The Monegasque acknowledged the pattern is not new. “There are some other weekends where we’ve been strong in free practice, but then coming to quali it’s very clear that the others are just having a lot more in the straights and it’s very difficult for us to match that,” he added. “The others I think normally have a bit more, it’s a bit easier for them to extract the lap time in Q3 than it is for us.”

Hamilton, starting his first season with Ferrari, shared the frustration over the straight-line deficit but offered a slightly different emphasis, pointing to the team’s need to better understand how to unlock the car’s qualifying potential as conditions shift across a session.

Ferrari’s strong race-day tyre management has been a consistent strength in 2025, and the team will hope that same characteristic gives Leclerc and Hamilton the tools to recover ground through the field in Sunday’s race at Austin.