Lewis Hamilton admits Ferrari said something worrying in British GP debrief

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Lewis Hamilton says Ferrari don’t have ‘any answers’ about their performance levels at the British Grand Prix.

Ferrari were expected to struggle at Silverstone due to the circuit layout, which traditionally rewards the most powerful cars.

The Austrian GP weekend had exposed Ferrari’s straight-line shortage and, with so few meaningful opportunities to charge the battery on this track, they were braced for one of their toughest weekends of the year.

Lewis Hamilton: Ferrari don’t understand why their British GP predictions were wrong

It was a major surprise to both Ferrari and Mercedes when Hamilton qualified on pole for the Sprint race ahead of Kimi Antonelli.

While Hamilton lost out to Antonelli in the 17-lap event, the pace was still far better than Ferrari had forecast.

Name the biggest winner and biggest loser from Saturday’s qualifying session at the British GP 👇

Kimi Antonelli claimed his fifth pole position of the season at Silverstone!

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Asked why the weekend had been ‘so different to expectations’, Hamilton said: “I don’t have an answer for you.

“Literally, after qualifying, I said that to the guys after we finished our debrief. I was like, ‘So, what do you think? Yesterday you said it was going to be like this and it was completely different.’

“And they said they only have, at the moment, questions. They don’t have any answers to it.”

While Ferrari would sooner be puzzled by a strong performance than a weak one, this is still concerning. It suggests that they still don’t fully understand their car.

• READ MORE: Charles Leclerc made mysterious change to Ferrari car before beating Lewis Hamilton at British GP

And logically, it will be more difficult to repeat their Sprint qualifying success if they don’t know how they achieved it.

24 hours later, Ferrari lost some ground relative to Mercedes, but they still qualified second and third. Leclerc was just under two-tenths adrift of Antonelli, with Hamilton 0.172s further back.

This was the result they achieved in Austria qualifying before slipping to fifth and eighth in the race. However, they split the Mercedes on merit this time, without the aid of a late yellow flag.