Ferrari suffered their first Q1 elimination in qualifying for a Grand Prix since 2023 when Lewis Hamilton broke track limits on his final run at Spa-Francorchamps and had his best time deleted

Lewis Hamilton suffered a brutal early exit in qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix. The Brit thought he had secured safe passage through to the second part of the session until the Formula 1 stewards intervened and deleted his quickest lap time.

Hamilton was sat in the bottom five and needed to perform with his final run. And he seemed to do exactly that with a time which catapulted him up to seventh on the timesheets and comfortably secured his passage into Q2.

Or so he thought. Shortly afterwards, it was confirmed that the stewards had taken a closer look at his lap and deleted it, concluding that he had exceeded the limits of the Spa-Francorchamps track by having all four wheels over the white line while navigating the famous Eau Rouge and Raidillon section of the Belgian track.

Cameras on board his Ferrari offered evidence that was inconclusive, though they showed that the wheels on the right side of the car were close to the white line that marks the limit of the track. The FIA confirmed that it was a static off-board camera which had shown that the seven-time F1 champion had fully gone off the circuit.

Hamilton seemed unaware at first that his lap was in danger, but became suspicious when he heard very little from his race engineer on his way back to the garage. “Is everything okay?” he asked over the radio, before the bad news was shared with him.

“Track limits at turn four,” came the reply from Riccardo Adami. Hamilton then sounded agitated as he asked: “Am I out?” The Ferrari engineer then confirmed that was the case, replying: “Yeah, lap time is deleted.”

Hamilton found himself down in 16th place on the timesheets as a result of the deletion of his best lap. It marked the first time a Ferrari has failed to progress from Q1 in a qualifying session for a full Grand Prix since Carlos Sainz in 2023.

And yet, it was the second time this weekend that Hamilton had endured a qualifying disaster. He also fell at the first hurdle when setting the grid for the Sprint race, spinning at the final corner while on his flying run to ensure that he would not get the chance to set a time good enough to progress.

For that spin, Hamilton blamed a new upgrade on his Ferrari that he was not familiar with. “We understood [the problem]. We’ve got a new component on the car that Charles [Leclerc, his team-mate] had in Montreal, and he’s had it for a few races, but that’s the first time I’ve had it,” he said. “Charles, you remember, he crashed with it in Montreal, and then I had the same experience in my first run with it yesterday.”

Hamilton offered little more detail, other than to suggest that the brakes themselves were not the problem. He added: “The brakes felt pretty good. I ultimately braked straight in the same position [in qualifying] as I did in [first practice] but a little bit more pressure and it snapped the rears. So I understood it, got a bit of running [with] it just now and hopefully that won’t be a problem – hopefully.”