‘A complete disaster’ – Leclerc and Hamilton lament ‘horrendous’ Ferrari performance in Sao Paulo

Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton suffered a race to forget in Sao Paulo as grid penalties, demanding track conditions and tyre struggles combined to produce Ferrari’s lowest-scoring weekend since the Italian Grand Prix.

The Monegasque had faced a 10-place drop for the race start after changing his Internal Combustion Engine (ICE), and a painful opening stint meant that he made minimal progress towards the points.

However, he gradually gained positions through the pit stops and switched to intermediate tyres at the right time, allowing him to cling on as the rain started to fall and eventually fight his way past Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson for P7 on the road. However, he was subsequently penalised for minor contact with the Kiwi and was hit with a post-race five-second penalty, dropping him to P8.

“The execution was okay but the pace was, on the first stint, horrendous for me,” Leclerc said after the race. “Particularly at the start, we just have so many struggles in putting those tyres into temperature.

“It’s unbelievable, and it’s just undriveable. Lewis definitely found a way because he had an incredible start, but for me it was just like driving on ice. Later on I had the pace, but I had very little free air and we also lost a lot of time on the straights, so the first stint was very poor.

“The second stint on the soft was actually pretty good, but not much free air. At the end, by being patient and making the right choice late on, we ended up P7 behind the top three teams. It is the way it is.

“There is so much to be learned. I felt like we were going into the rain and it was like a coin flip – maybe we end up on the right side of things or we end up… it’s just a complete disaster to drive. We’ve got a lot of work to do on that side.”

Contrastingly, Hamilton’s opening laps had hinted at a much stronger day for Ferrari – his grid penalty left him to line up a distant 20th, but he gained 11 positions and seemed to be an early threat to the frontrunners.

However, the performance of his rear tyres rapidly declined and he dropped back down the order, hindered further by an investigation into him leaving the track and gaining an advantage.

To avoid a penalty, he gave the position back to Haas’ Ollie Bearman and went on to establish himself as one of the first to call for a move to slick tyres, which Ferrari agreed with after some back-and-forth over the radio.

The gamble paid off to begin with, but Hamilton only made it to the tail end of the top 10 before he recovered from a spin and found himself stuck in P9, crossing the line a lap behind race winner Lando Norris.

He explained: “I had a great start, and I thought I was on for something positive, then the tyres dropped off almost immediately as the track dried. It’s really hard to then stay on the track. Just massive challenges with getting the tyres in the window and having them working.

“The triple triple [header] has been really tough and challenging for the team, but they’ve done a really amazing job through it all.

"We didn’t get the points I think the team deserved today. I definitely take some of that on me today, with that [spin] at the end. We live and we learn and we move on.”