Oscar Piastri says he does not "have any great ideas at the moment" over how to arrest his slide and reassert his control over the F1 world championship.
Piastri could only finish a distant fifth in the United States GP, having crashed out at Turn 1 of the Sprint, leaving him with only 10 points for the weekend.
He collected team-mate Lando Norris in the Sprint incident, with the Briton going on to finish in second place in the race, to record 18 points, and reduce Piastri's lead to 14 points with 141 left on the board.
However, the biggest threat appears to be Max Verstappen, who scored a maximum haul of 33 points through the Sprint and GP victories to take 23 points out of Piastri to sit 40 behind going into the final five races.
Since winning at Zandvoort, Piastri has leaked 20 points to Norris and 64 to Verstappen in five races as the pressure for the title builds.
Reflecting on his performance, the Australian conceded that "the pace just wasn't there."
"I don't have any great ideas at the moment," Piastri told media, including RacingNews365.
"Qualifying was clean from my side; it was just that the pace wasn't there, and it was honestly a pretty similar story in the race.
"This layout is quite interesting; there are a lot of very high-speed corners with a lot of ride content, there are a lot of very low-speed corners, so you need to be good at both ends of the spectrum.
"Actually, there's not a whole lot [of corners] in that medium-speed range; there are a few, but more outside of it, so for me, it's not been a particularly happy hunting ground my whole F1 career.
"So in some ways, I can't say I'm shocked that this has been a tough weekend, but obviously I was hoping for better.
"Max has had a good run in the last few races, but ultimately, if we can find our way again, find our pace, and certainly for me, find the pace again, then I don't have any major concerns.
"There is still a long way to go in the championship - and for Max, he's chased it down pretty quickly, but it is not exactly a small gap with four, five rounds to go.
"So if we can find our pace again, things will take care of themselves."
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