Lewis Hamilton's "worst season ever" in Formula 1 is spiralling into hopelessness, with the seven-time world champion left devastated again after the Vegas Grand Prix.
Hamilton made up nine places relative to his starting position in the 50-lap Vegas race, but most of that was accomplished in a "pretty straightforward" opening lap, in which Hamilton "just stayed out of trouble".
He only cleared the two Haas cars after that, with most of his race defined by a fruitless pursuit of eventual ninth-place finisher Nico Hulkenberg.
Hamilton couldn't keep pace with Hulkenberg's Sauber in the final stint, instead nearly falling in the clutches of Ocon's Haas - though he also said there had been a "balance shift" after the contact with Alex Albon.
But rather than zero in on any specifics of the race, Hamilton was just overall very disappointed.
"I feel terrible. Terrible. It's been very- it's been the worst season, ever," Hamilton told British broadcaster Sky Sports.
"No matter how much I try, it just keeps going worse."
He told the written media that there was "zero" satisfaction from the recovery to 10th place and no positives to take away.
He also said that "at this rate, with my performance", Ferrari didn't stand a real chance of second in the constructors' standings, and that "I've tried everything" with the 2025 car and "it's not working".
So morose was the tone of his media session that Hamilton was asked to deny that he was going to walk away from F1, which he did.
"I think the main issue is yesterday - when you start from P20 [P19], for sure the race is difficult," insisted team principal Fred Vasseur.
"But at the end of the day, I think he had also a decent first part of the race - but we struggled a little bit more [in the second stint] with the medium.
"But no, we don't have to- let's calm down, to jump out of the car and to make the first comment it's always a bit too much [to be reacting to], let's discuss after the debrief."
Hamilton's team-mate Charles Leclerc capped a more productive weekend with sixth place, which was 0.2s away from being a top-five, as he came up just short of capitalising on Kimi Antonelli's time penalty.
"I felt like it was probably the best race of the season in terms of personal performance, I felt like honestly all the laps were qualy laps and there weren't many mistakes," Leclerc told Sky.
"I'm very happy with my own performance - but P6 is very frustrating."
