Lewis Hamilton left rueing key decision after poor qualifying

Lewis Hamilton was left rueing a decision to pursue a different set-up direction to Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc at the F1 Japanese Grand Prix.

While Leclerc took fourth for Ferrari, Hamilton was three-tenths off his teammate in a disappointing eighth as his challenging start to life with F1’s most iconic team continued during qualifying at Suzuka.

The seven-time world champion revealed after the session that he struggled to extract performance from his Ferrari after going down a different set-up route.

"Not good enough from my side. P8 is obviously not great,” a despondent Hamilton said.

“I was happy to get into Q3 and it was a really tight battle out there with everyone. I just didn’t get great laps in Q3.

“We are running higher than we would like but everyone is in the same boat in that respect.

“Particularly after the last race, we are a bit higher than we want to be. It’s usually the knock-on effect from a weekend like we had before.

”But Charles [Leclerc] did an amazing job. We went in different directions with set-up. I had a lot of understeer and just couldn't dial it up throughout qualifying.

"I genuinely love the rain so I hope it comes tomorrow after a qualifying like that.”

How did Charles Leclerc unlock more performance?

Leclerc fared much better than Hamilton and put his stronger lap down to finding gains thanks to his driving style.

"The lap was really good. I put everything in that lap. There wasn't much I could have done better,” the Monegasque explained to Sky Sports F1.

"Yesterday I was quite happy because we worked really well and unlocked some performance in the car.

"In qualifying, it started to go away from us a little bit, especially in Q3. I had either a lot of oversteer or understeer but the lap I did, I was really happy with it.

"We need to keep working. There's still a big gap compared to McLaren and Red Bull and this is our target.

"On the whole, it's been positive because I feel a lot more comfortable with the car.

“We really found something from my driving style that seems to work a bit better and gave me a lot more confidence for the rest of qualifying and this is positive for the rest of the season."