Hamilton and Leclerc explain what went wrong for Ferrari in Italian GP qualifying

At the 2026 Italian Grand Prix qualifying in Monza, Ferrari faced a tough session, denying them a chance to challenge for pole position. Lewis Hamilton just scraped into the top 10 for 10th, with a lap good enough to beat Gabriel Bortoleto by 0.001 seconds. Charles Leclerc was ninth, 0.007 seconds ahead. Both were more than 0.6 seconds off Kimi Antonelli. In Q3, Ferrari improved. Leclerc stayed fourth, 0.075s behind George Russell after the first lap. Hamilton took fifth. Oscar Piastri was handed a three-place penalty for impeding Liam Lawson in Q2, so both moved to the second row. Hamilton explained: 'We did a great job overnight. I was really happy with the car and didn't change anything from FP3 to Q1. I felt confident, hit the first lap in Q1, felt solid. Then we waited for the tyre to cool. Because everyone was waiting, and Charles didn't want to go out first, we had to wait and wait. We only got one push. It made it pretty challenging.' He was slow to get out of the garage, costing him a tow on his first run and being 0.8s down. With a tow from Leclerc, he improved by 0.75s. Leclerc noted: 'We have been far from perfect. We've had quite a lot of issues in the background. It's a very demanding track to optimise everything power unit wise. But I think we've been too sub-optimal. It was more related to the energy management. I started my last lap in Q2 with the new tyres, where the biggest problem on the battery was. So my lap time was nowhere.' Ferrari secured a second-row lockout and will need to sort energy management for the race, where they expect to be faster in corners but exposed on straights.