Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc says same thing as Ferrari left in deep trouble

Charles Leclerc said he has experimented with the set-up of his Ferrari after admitting: "I don't think it can be any worse." Both he and Lewis Hamilton were left wanting for pace in qualifying for the Sprint in Brazil and, even though they both managed to make progress in the short-form race, they were still concerned about the car.

Leclerc started the Sprint eighth and managed to make up two places to fifth, including a late overtake on Fernando Alonso. Hamilton rose from 11th on the starting grid to finish seventh, completing all three of his overtakes on the opening lap, while both drivers gained one position when Oscar Piastri crashed out while running in third place.

Speaking after the Sprint, Leclerc said he would be making set-up changes ahead of qualifying for the main Grand Prix in the hope of stumbling upon a more competitive performance window. "This weekend has been very tough," the Monegasque sighed.

"Unfortunately, we have an issue on both cars and we cannot explain what is going on there. We are losing a lot of time on the straights having higher downforce than others, but that doesn't explain the gap that we see so there's something off.

"I will experiment with the set-up anyway because at the moment we are not where we want to be and I don't think it can be any worse than qualifying yesterday, so hopefully that will help us to do a step forward."

Hamilton enjoyed a superb launch off the line and managed to emerge from the first few corners three places higher than his starting position of 11th. He felt he had the pace in the early laps to be able to make more progress but, before he got the chance, Piastri's crash which also saw Nico Hulkenberg and Franco Colapinto spin off at the same corner led to the race being red-flagged and that killed all the momentum he had.

Hamilton said: "I enjoyed the race. Tricky conditions but I had a really good start. After that, the red flag kind of neutralised it a little bit. I had good pace up until then but then everyone got fresh tyres and that made it really difficult to overtake.

"But we do have problems with the balance of the car and our top speed is really slow, that's why we can't overtake. We need to see how we can tackle that."

Ferrari slipped down to third in the constructors' championship as Mercedes finished second and third in the Sprint, Kimi Antonelli second behind winner Lando Norris and ahead of team-mate George Russell.