"Devastated" Hamilton admits Mercedes career end 'can't come soon enough'

Hamilton failed to reach Q3 in conditions in which Hamilton normally excels. He scored just one point and finished 50 seconds behind race winner Max Verstappen. Hamilton gave a blunt assessment on the event in Brazil. "Yeah, well, the race was crap. Yesterday [Saturday] was terrible, today [Sunday] was terrible. Yesterday was bad, qualifying was bad, the sprint race was bad. The car's just been bad all weekend," Hamilton said, holding no punches.

Is Hamilton looking forward to the end of the season?

Hamilton finished far behind his teammate George Russell, who managed to leapfrog him in the World Championship. The driver, who will turn 40 during the winter break, admits the end "can't come soon enough".

"I just put my focus on something else. I'm not fighting for the championship. It doesn't really matter where we finish in the championship. I don't care if I finish ahead of George [Russell] or behind George, it doesn't make that big of a difference to me. I just want to keep the car out the wall and try to score points if I can for the team. If I can finish well and they give me a car that doesn't bounce off the track in the next few races, then hopefully we get a better result. Looking forward to Christmas," Hamilton said.

This poor run of form comes after a period when Mercedes were the in-form team. In the summer, Hamilton ended his near 1,000-day F1 win drought at Silverstone and took home the winning trophy from the Belgian Grand Prix in what was a one-two for Mercedes until Russell got disqualified. Those happy memories seem far away now for Hamilton.

"It's devastating to have these bad races in the second half of the season. But all I can say is we're trying, we're coming into the weekend. But it's definitely not acceptable, it's definitely not good enough. And we have to take accountability, I have to take accountability. But I am doing the best with what I've got. The car has been the worst this weekend. I don't know what it is, we're going to have to find out what it is," Hamilton stressed before praising his mechanics for preparing the car at 4am.

Hamilton was asked why the cars keeps being so bad. "You tell me. That's the million dollar question. And if you can find it, I'll give you a million dollars," Hamilton said sarcastically. Hamilton has just three events left with Mercedes. He will be hoping for a better result in Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi before turning his attention to Ferrari. The Italian team are in the mix for the 2024 Constructors' Championship title.