Lewis Hamilton shares Ferrari 'pain' as struggles continue

Lewis Hamilton has stated he feels pain for the entire Ferrari team amid its turbulent F1 campaign.

Hamilton has not yet taken a podium finish with the Italian squad after joining at the start of the year, while Ferrari remains the only team in the top four that has not won a grand prix this year.

Singapore marked another challenging event for Ferrari, with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton ending the race in sixth and eighth, respectively.

Hamilton was struck with a severe brake problem in the final laps of the race, forcing him to nurse his car across the finish line.

The seven-time champion praised the energy Ferrari is delivering every event, despite walking away from many grands prix feeling disappointed.

“The guys are pushing so hard each weekend, I feel pain for all the team,” he told DAZN.

“From catering to marketing, to the guys in the garage and engineers. They show up every weekend and they really do give absolutely everything.

“But the car we have is just not at a good level [compared to] the guys ahead of us, particularly as they've had some upgrades, we can't match them.

“So we're on the knife-edge, trying to get as close as we can.”

Having recently slipped behind Mercedes in the standings, Ferrari only finds itself eight points ahead of Red Bull, who is largely fighting one-handed with Max Verstappen.

Hamilton suggested Ferrari's biggest shortcoming is in qualifying, which puts its grand prix prospects on the back foot.

“There was potential for us to be further ahead this weekend,” he said. “Qualifying, we still are not extracting the full potential of the car.

“There was potential to have been third and fourth on the grid this weekend, if we had perfected tyre performance and not queued at the end of the pit lane, for example.

“In the race, we were kind of on par, pace-wise, with at least a couple of cars ahead of us, but not quicker.

“If we can get our qualifying fixed, which is very, very hard to do against these quick cars, then maybe we can get slightly better results.

“But ultimately, we're still fighting for fourth, fifth, sixth at best.”