Vasseur reveals why Hamilton's 11-place Brazil charge came at a cost for Ferrari

Hamilton started 20th after a power unit penalty and was ninth by the end of lap one at Interlagos. He couldn't hold on to those gains: once the intermediates were past their best, he lost places and fell back to 14th. That gave Ferrari, and Hamilton himself, a lot to explain after the race.

Speaking to reporters after the race, Vasseur described the problem as a trade-off rather than a driver error. "It was probably a question of tyre pressures," he said. "You cannot have a first lap like that and then not pay some price for it."

In the interview, the Frenchman added that there was a positive and a negative side, "as with every choice". The car "went very well at the start but a bit less in the middle of the stint". He also admitted Ferrari were "too inconsistent" for most of the race, and said the car was very difficult to drive, which was where the missing performance came from.

Hamilton's own explanation matched his boss's. "I think it's a temperature thing, as I think when the temperature is high or the pressure increases… we have struggled all weekend in general," he said, adding: "Once we got onto the slick tyre, we were looking a little bit better." He was the first driver to switch to slicks, on lap 14, but a late spin when the rain returned left him ninth. GPblog covered that spin and his opinion, which cost him a chunk of time.

Charles Leclerc was blunter. "The execution was okay but the pace was, on the first stint, horrendous for me," he said. "It's unbelievable, and it's just undriveable." He started 14th after his own grid penalty and crossed the line seventh. A five-second penalty for contact with Liam Lawson at Turn 12 then dropped him to eighth.

Once Leclerc's penalty was applied, Ferrari left Brazil with just six points. It was the team's lowest-scoring weekend since the Italian Grand Prix. Mercedes scored 22 points and clinched the constructors' title with two races to go, moving 142 points clear of Ferrari.

Hamilton had started the weekend saying he and Leclerc had put their tension behind them after their first-lap tangle in Mexico. Instead, he dropped from third to fourth in the drivers' standings. Vasseur is already worried about Las Vegas, where the cold will force Ferrari to work in reverse: "All championship we've been trying to cool the tyres a bit, while there we will have to warm them up."