Hamilton devastated as Ferrari plunge to new qualifying low

Lewis Hamilton spoke of his devastation as Ferrari plunged to a qualifying low for the season on Saturday ahead of his first race in Italy with Formula One's oldest and most successful team.

Neither Ferrari reached the top 10 shootout at Imola, the F1 circuit closest to Ferrari's Maranello factory, with Charles Leclerc 11th fastest and seven-times world champion Hamilton 12th for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.

It was the first time in seven races that Ferrari had failed to get at least one of their cars into the top 10 and the sting was all the more painful for coming in front of the passionate tifosi.

"Definitely devastated and gutted," was Hamilton's assessment after McLaren's Oscar Piastri took pole with Red Bull's Max Verstappen second. "The car was genuinely feeling pretty good. I felt like the car setup was right and we just can't go quick enough," he told reporters.

"We threw the soft (tyre) on at the end and for some reason it just did not come alive, there was no grip," added the Briton, who joined Ferrari from Mercedes in January.

Hamilton, whose decision to join Ferrari had sent expectations soaring initially, said the fans could not be faulted for their support.

"It's magic to see how much Ferrari means, I've never seen anything like it," he said.

Asked for his prediction for Sunday's race, Leclerc told Sky Sports television that "I can fight as much as I want, but I cannot do miracles.

"This is what there is in the car and I'm trying to extract the maximum from it.

"We are just P-nowhere. There's just not enough performance in the car and I keep repeating myself, there's not the potential that I would hope in the car at the moment, we need to be better," he added.

Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur accepted it had been a disappointing afternoon.

"The tyre situation was strange for everyone today, but it seemed to affect us more than the others and I also think we didn’t execute the session as well as we could have done," said the Frenchman.

"Here is not the easiest place to overtake so it will be a challenging afternoon (on Sunday) and we will probably have to take some risks, specifically in terms of the strategy."

Ferrari are fourth in the constructors' standings, after finishing overall runners-up last year, and 152 points behind McLaren.

Their low point of the season so far was having both cars disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix for failing post-race checks.