Lewis Hamilton revealed a conversation with Pierre Gasly after the Qatar Grand Prix sprint race, in which the Frenchman told the Ferrari driver, ‘you looked so bad’. The Brit spent the majority of Saturday’s mini race in Lusail with only the Alpine duo behind him on track.

The stage was set on Friday for Hamilton’s latest struggles when the 40-year-old was eliminated in the first part of sprint qualifying, setting him up for a P18 start. With nothing to lose, Ferrari’s engineers made set-up changes, and the veteran Brit was one of four drivers to start from the pit lane.

However, he could make no progress from 18th on lap one, only gaining a spot to Lance Stroll after the Aston Martin driver, who was also running outside of the top 10, came in for an unexpected pit stop.

Gasly, who spent most of his race staring at Hamilton’s wings, expressed his sympathy with the Ferrari star in Parc Ferme after the race. Retracing his conversation with reporters after the sprint, the Brit said: “Pierre came up to me afterwards, and he was like: ‘Yo, you looked so bad!’ I was like: ‘Yeah, I know, no s*** Sherlock.’”

The P17 finish in Saturday’s sprint was nothing more than an extension of Hamilton’s worrying recent form. Heading into the penultimate race of the season, he has recorded three consecutive finishes of eighth or worse on Sundays, and Ferrari are dropping like a stone in the Constructors’ Championship.

Now fourth in the standings behind McLaren, Mercedes, and Red Bull, the Italian constructor is facing a mighty uphill battle to salvage a frustrating and taxing season in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

In a separate interview, Hamilton was asked to give fans an insight into the troubles that he is experiencing behind the wheel. “I’ll be here all day… yeah, I’ll be here all day,” he replied to Sky Sports F1.

“Well I mean we started from the pit lane because we wanted to explore and make some changes, they had some things they found on the simulator last night. So we implemented those changes, and the car was really in the wrong direction and very, very difficult for whatever reason, clearly for both of us.

“We just don’t have any stability – so when I say that, the rear end is not planted, so it is sliding, snapping a lot. Then we have bouncing, so when you’re going into corners like Turn 10, the thing starts bouncing, and you have a lot of mid-corner understeer.

“And then you apply the steering, and then it snaps, and you try and catch it. It’s different between low, medium and high [speed corners], and it’s a fight like you couldn’t believe.”