Lewis Hamilton gives first reaction to Ferrari’s Bahrain GP upgrades after practice

Lewis Hamilton has reacted positively to Ferrari’s upgrade package for this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix.

Ferrari have introduced several upgrades for this weekend in Bahrain, notably a new floor.

The new parts will look to turn around Ferrari’s disappointing start to the 2025 F1 season.

Ferrari have failed to finish on the podium in any of the opening three races, with Hamilton’s sprint race win in China the only highlight of the year so far.

It’s been widely reported that Ferrari have struggled to run their car as low to the ground as they wanted, hence the change in floor for this weekend.

While the timesheets didn’t look encouraging for Ferrari amid McLaren’s impressive turn of pace, Hamilton was happy with the upgrades.

“The upgrades definitely working,” Hamilton said after FP2. “A big thank you to everyone back home working so far hard on bringing the upgrades.

“It’s never an easy thing. There’s a lot of work that goes on in the wind tunnel and a lot of work that goes on fabricating, putting together these floors. It’s just good to see that we’re taking steps forward.

“We’re trying to extract more from it. I hope that we can make the right steps overnight into tomorrow.”

Lewis Hamilton eyes Ferrari “consistency”

Hamilton showed flashes of pace throughout practice but struggled to get a quick lap together on the soft tyre.

The seven-time world champion was on course to move into third before running wide at the final couple of corners.

It was a similar story for Charles Leclerc, who took several laps to move into the top five.

With high tyre degradation expected in Sunday’s race, Hamilton admitted he needs the Ferrari package to be more “consistent through the lap”.

“Same old Fridays. It was fun. Quite difficult in the morning as always with the temperature being so high,” Hamilton explained. “The grip was terrible on the hard tyre for the first run. It was quite a big shock from hard to soft which was much better. We made some changes. The car felt pretty decent.”

On what Ferrari need to improve ahead of qualifying, Hamilton added: “Just consistency. Just trying to put the laps together, having a car that’s easy to drive.

“That’s consistent through the lap. At the moment, it’s a bit different between low, medium and high, as you often have. So we’re just trying to finesse it. We’re trying to tweak it and make sure we have good long run pace as that’s where you need to be strong here.”