Lewis Hamilton's expectations hit rock bottom as the Ferrari driver shares outlook for the F1 Bahrain GP

Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton shared a bleak prediction for his race after finishing a disappointing P9 in the qualifying session for the Bahrain GP. The seven-time F1 world champion looked on the backfoot throughout the weekend and hasn't been able to extract the maximum out of the SF-25, unlike his teammate Charles Leclerc, who will start the race from the front row.

The 40-year-old was uncomfortable with the car's balance and looked slow from FP1 despite the Italian team introducing a new upgraded floor for the weekend. The Brit failed to massively improve on his final lap in qualifying and finished behind the likes of Carlos Sainz, who qualified a place ahead of him for the main race.

In his post-race interview, Lewis Hamilton was asked about his expectations from the main race on Sunday, April 13, to which he replied:

"Let's hope I can finish from there."

Speaking with F1.com, Hamilton was apologetic for his performance to Ferrari and believed that the Italian team was doing a good job, adding:

“On a positive, our car is clearly a lot better than what I’m delivering with it and Charles did a great job with it today, so big apologies to the team for not doing the job."

Lewis Hamilton is currently P8 in the drivers' standings with 15 points, with the majority of those coming due to his Sprint win in China last month.

Lewis Hamilton analyzes his qualifying session in Bahrain

Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton said that he could not find a "performance window" for his SF-25 in the qualifying and failed to produce the lap that he desired from the car.

As per F1.com, the 40-year-old analyzed his one-lap performance and said:

"It wasn’t the day I was hoping for. The changes made overnight set us back in FP3, and while we applied further setup adjustments ahead of qualifying it just didn’t come together and I also didn’t find the performance window I needed. Credit to Charles, who did a great job out there."

"On a positive note, the race pace looked promising yesterday, and with a long race ahead, there’s still an opportunity to make progress. We’ll analyze the learnings overnight and come back stronger. A big thank you to the team for their continued efforts — we’ll keep pushing," he added.

Charles Leclerc, on the other hand, had a more positive qualifying as he would start the race P2 and said:

"I didn't expect this result in qualifying, but I think we have worked very well in the last few weeks and this is the reward."

Lewis Hamilton will hope to get as close as possible to his teammate in the main race and score maximum points for the Italian team in the Constructors' Championship.