Twelve clicks. That is the setup number Lewis Hamilton came back to again and again on Sunday evening in Austin, and the number Ferrari spent all afternoon chasing but never caught.
Hamilton finished fourth at the Circuit of the Americas on 25 October, 18.515 seconds behind winner Kimi Antonelli and roughly a second behind Max Verstappen in third. Charles Leclerc took second for Ferrari.
The gap to the podium sounded small. Hamilton did not treat it that way.
“It’s crazy, to be 12 clicks down,” he said to Grandprix.com, referring to the amount of front wing load his car was carrying relative to what the race actually needed.
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A Friday error that two pit stops couldn’t erase
The problem, Hamilton said, started before the race began. He has told Speedweek the balance went wrong in the very first practice session on Friday and never came back.
Ferrari treated it as a correction job once the race was running. The team added four clicks of front wing at Hamilton’s first pit stop and another four at his second, each time trying to kill the understeer he was reporting. He said the car still needed about four more.
The opening two stints produced what Hamilton called “massive understeer” through Turn 1 and the slow stadium sequence of Turns 11 to 15, where any car whose front end will not turn pays a heavy price. Starting fifth on used soft tires cost him additional time at the lights, Grandprix.com reported, and Hamilton estimated the balance deficit alone was worth around eight seconds across the afternoon.
Only on fresh hard tires in the final stint did the car come close to where he wanted it. By then Verstappen was out of reach, and a Virtual Safety Car in the closing laps closed the small window Hamilton still had.
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“The VSC phase spoiled things for me a bit and cost me a great battle with Max Verstappen,” Hamilton told Speedweek.
He had already overtaken Lando Norris for fourth by that point, suggesting the car itself was quick enough once the balance was right.
Five races, same complaint
The Austin verdict was not just about Austin.
“I’ve lost a lot of points in the last five races and I think it’s really come from set-up,” Hamilton said to Crash.net.
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That shifts the issue off the car’s outright pace and onto Ferrari’s engineering process, which has twice now needed in-race surgery to get Hamilton into a competitive window. His final-stint recovery through the field underlined the point: when the balance was there, the lap times were there.
Formula 1 moves to the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez on Sunday 1 November for the Mexico City Grand Prix, the next chance for Ferrari to start a weekend with Hamilton’s setup already in the right window.
