Lewis Hamilton described his costly slow braking problems that ruined his Singapore Grand Prix.
Seven-time world champion Hamilton was chasing Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes in fifth place at the end of the race on Sunday, when he encountered braking distress.
Hamilton had to nurse his sick Ferrari home and lose his job to teammate Charles Leclair.
Briton, 40, also remained vulnerable to Fernando Alonso, but he dodged the Aston Martin driver to finish seventh on the road.
However, Hamilton hit with a five-second penalty after the race, descending on Alonso’s eighth to repeatedly surpass the track limit.
“It was an ok race. I didn’t get a great start. It was very difficult to pass, and I was stuck in that position,” explained Hamilton.
“Finally, I gave up on the brakes after catching you. I saw a spark coming out of the front left and had to retreat to cool it down.
“When I cooled them they came back a bit, but still not back to the end.”
Alonso fumed in Hamilton with a foul mouth radio rant after the checkered flag, but Ferrari team principal Fred Vasser downplayed the safety concerns surrounding the condition of his driver’s vehicle.
“From a safety standpoint, yes, we adjusted the pace,” Vasseur said. “It’s not like Lewis was pushing like hell on the final lap, but he’s 30 seconds slow.
“In terms of safety, it was a safety aspect, but not a target. The target is that it is safe, but the target is not safe.”
Hamilton: Ferrari doesn’t extract the full potential of the car
Hamilton said he felt the “pain” of the entire team as Ferrari endured another overwhelming result in P6 and P8 in Singapore.
“First, we push hard every weekend,” Hamilton said.
“I have struggled with every team, from catering to marketing to engineering.
“But the cars we have are not on the level of those before, especially since they have some upgrades and we can’t match them. We’re trying to get as close as possible.”
Hamilton admits that Ferrari is not currently exploiting the full potential of the SF-25 Challenger.
“In qualifying, I don’t think we’ve fully extracted the possibilities of the car yet. We weren’t in this race, not the last race,” he added.
“For example, if we had completed and extracted the tire performance at the end of the pit lane, I think we could have been third or fourth on the grid this weekend.
“Then, the race, we are proud at least on the same stage as a few guys before us, but obviously fast, not fast.
“If we can fix the qualifying round, we can get a little better, although it’s very difficult for these very fast cars.