Ferrari pressure mounts as Vasseur urges calm

Ferrari’s slump continued in Singapore, with growing criticism in Italy after another disappointing weekend for the Maranello team.

Sky Italia’s Leo Turrini captured the frustration in one sharp line: "Zero prospects and zero titles." Lewis Hamilton’s first season in red has proved far tougher than expected. The seven-time world champion finished sixth in qualifying, just ahead of teammate Charles Leclerc.

"I felt good in the car all weekend," Hamilton said. "I thought, perhaps wrongly, that we'd be able to fight for the top spots. Then the way the program is run, the waiting times in the pitlane, using a tyre and coming back in, these things don't allow us to optimise the session.

"We need to work on it with the team, discuss it calmly. Everyone is doing their best, but we also need to listen to what the others are doing."

He pointed to Mercedes’ sharper execution after former teammate George Russell took pole position. "If you look at Mercedes, they were the first out and didn't lose any tyre temperature," Hamilton observed.

2009 world champion Jenson Button believes the strain inside Ferrari is beginning to show. "You can't be afraid of failure, but that's exactly how I feel it's going at Ferrari," he told Sky. "I think everyone thinks they can easily be thrown out. That's not a good feeling."

Leclerc again denied being fed up, but his tone betrayed growing frustration. "When a team like Mercedes, which usually struggles on tracks like these, puts it on pole, we have no excuses," he said.

"We have to do better. I don't know what else to say," the Monegasque added, having described his weekend with an expletive. Team principal Frederic Vasseur admitted that Ferrari’s rivals have clearly taken a step forward.

"Yes, it's true for Red Bull, it's true for McLaren, it's true for us," he said. "I think Mercedes is improving. They struggled a lot yesterday, but today they were impressive, which means they've made a huge step forward compared to everyone else, not just us."

He conceded the current car remains difficult to handle. "No, it's all very much on the limit. It's not an easy car to drive," he said. Responding to Hamilton’s comments about tyre preparation, Vasseur said the process is more complex than it looks.

"It's not easy to find the right approach on the preparation lap for the tyres, and maybe then if you have good conditions at the beginning of the lap and not at the end, it's all very much on the limit," he said.

"But I want to take the positives from the weekend. We were there on Friday morning, we were there in Q1, and we have to continue to develop, to have this approach. We have to keep pushing and be convinced that we can do it."