Lewis Hamilton feels the pain as Ferrari hit new low

At a circuit named after its founder Enzo, Ferrari faced a fresh nadir with neither driver making it into the final qualifying shoot-out for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

Any hopes the tifosi could give the team a lift at their local circuit proved unfounded as Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton could only qualify 11th and 12th fastest.

Hamilton had likened trying to solve his brake issues after Friday practice to a lottery, but had promised to roll the dice in qualifying.

Unfortunately for the Briton, changes to the SF-25 for this race – primarily to its rear wing – could not resolve the gremlins that have hampered Hamilton in particular all season long. That one bright spark of a sprint win in China back in March seems an age ago.

The Italian manufacturer has promised greater upgrades in two races’ time in Spain, but new tweaks in Imola aimed at remedying issues with the ride height of the car put them further down the grid rather than catapulting forward as had been the aspiration.

At the last race in Miami, Hamilton’s frustrations had spilt over down the race radio, but at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, qualifying was a new low. At a circuit notorious for its ­difficulty in overtaking, Leclerc and Hamilton know they face a fight just to pick up minor points in front of a sea of red in the stands.

It is now 19 years since Ferrari last won at Imola in the hands of Michael Schumacher – they seem a lifetime away from being ­competitive, let alone capturing that dominance at what could be Imola’s last grand prix for the foreseeable future.

It proved a tough qualifying for home hopes with Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, who grew up a few miles away in Bologna, also failing to make it out of Q3 in front of his school ­classmates, whom he had invited along as his guests this weekend.

While Ferrari’s struggles have become somewhat predictable from one weekend to the next, so too has been the early part of the weekend. McLaren had enjoyed a 1-2 in all three of the practice sessions, but again could not repeat the feat come qualifying.

It did at least result in a third pole position of the season for championship leader Oscar Piastri, whose lap was just three hundredths of a second quicker than that of Max Verstappen.

Despite sealing pole in an hour-and-a-half qualifying session curtailed by two red flags, the Australian admitted he had struggled with the C6 tyres on their debut, the softest tyres in Pirelli’s range aimed at adding a new jeopardy to a season which has not been renowned for its overtaking at the front of the grid.

After that pole, he said: “It was a very tough session with all the delays, red flags and the tyres. The tyres had been very, very tricky. We got the car in a nice window. The lap was good. I had about four cars in the last corner which didn’t help but it was enough.”

Lando Norris’s struggles to keep up with his teammate continued as he was bumped into fourth on the grid behind George Russell, who in contrast to the McLarens and Verstappen set his lap on the medium C5 tyre.

Q1 was bookended by two high-speed crashes. First Yuki Tsunoda flipped over in his Red Bull and in the final seconds of the session Franco Colapinto also hit the barriers at speed, both bringing out the red flags.

The first delay came just a few minutes into the session with a ­monstrous crash for Tsunoda less than a week after turning 25.

At what is Red Bull’s 400th grand prix weekend, he careered into the gravel at turn six and flipped over as he hit the tyre barriers.

Thanks to his protective halo device in particular, he walked away unscathed despite debris being strewn all over the track.

Colapinto’s accident in the final seconds of Q1 was not quite as dramatic when, on his debut, he hit the grass on the exit from Tamburello and crashed heavily into the barriers.