Hamilton says Ferrari are losing out on the straights after taking P5 in US GP Qualifying

Not for the first time in 2026, Ferrari’s strong practice pace did not translate into Qualifying, with the Scuderia losing out in Austin to Mercedes and Red Bull in the battle at the front.

After setting the pace on Friday, Charles Leclerc had to settle for fourth in Q3, while FP3 pace-setter Lewis Hamilton could do no better than fifth, just 0.044s behind his team mate.

Hamilton was happy with the behaviour of his car and pointed to Ferrari’s straight-line performance as one reason for their drop-off relative to their rivals.

“We know through the weekend we look at the straight, like just up to Turn 1, when we cut power, they just keep pulling,” he said. “That's similar in other places, like going into Turn 11.

“I think we might be similar in maybe into 12, but then the rest of the lap, a little bit. You see it on the overlay. I don't know what happened. My car felt really good. Lap was solid, so they were just quicker.”

Hamilton believes that Ferrari's rivals have also improved their chassis of late, with the SF-26 having been acknowledged as the benchmark for much of the season.

“Car felt good as I said, so it was a clean lap, no issues at all, really,” he noted. “So, I think that's the only place we lose [the straight]. I think our car is really solid. I mean, at least as good, if not maybe slightly better, maybe than the others.

“But I think they have closed up on chassis. You've seen the Red Bull closed up on their downforce. Mercedes took a three-tenth step of upgrade at least a couple of races ago. I think they're starting to figure out how to utilise that, and so they're now matching us through the corners.

“And we're not able to take that step, in this season, to close that speed on the straight.”

Pressed on how good the Red Bull Ford power unit is at the moment Hamilton said: “It varies. I mean, I haven't seen the actual numbers this weekend. I think this morning it was like three-tenths, but in some places three to five tenths, maybe it's four-tenths. It's pretty impressive.

“I don't know if you see the overlays, but into Turn 1, ours starts dipping, and theirs just keeps going. So that's hard to compete with.

“If we had the same power as them, we would be right there in the battle. I think we'd probably be on the front row. But we know that that's the case, so we try to make the best we can out of it.”

While Hamilton was happy with how his car performed in Qualifying, Leclerc was not. He conceded that he didn’t have an optimum out lap, and thus his tyres were not quite in the window.

“It's very disappointing,” said the Monegasque driver. “Because I think there are some other weekends where we've been strong in free practices, but then coming 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.

“But I felt 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, and it was like one or two degrees less in Q3, and for me it was a huge difference.

“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.”

Leclerc said Ferrari now need to understand why extracting performance in Q3 is proving more difficult.

“It is quite frustrating, but there are reasons for it,” he said. “And so at the same time, I think we just need to work harder and try and understand very well those tyres, even better than what we are doing now, because 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. And as soon as we are a tiny bit outside the window, we pay a lot the price. So this is something that we need to look into.”

Despite Ferrari’s Qualifying deficit, Hamilton remains hopeful of making progress in Sunday’s race.

“You have to be realistic,” said Hamilton. “We're fourth and fifth. It's very hard to overtake here. Even if you're P2 on the grid, it's hard to beat someone on race distance.

“In 2012 it took a lot to get past Vettel back then. But maybe with strategy, we can progress. We can get a good run up into Turn 1 there's opportunities there for strategy, so we should see.”