'He definitely has it', so why did Hamilton say he was useless?

Lewis Hamilton insisted he "still loves" Formula 1 after his most challenging weekend of his Ferrari career so far at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

On Saturday, Hamilton had said he was "just useless" after the seven-time champion qualified 12th on the grid, while his team-mate Charles Leclerc took Ferrari's first grand prix pole position of the season.

On Sunday, Hamilton finished in the same place, while Leclerc, after fighting with the race-winning McLarens for the first two-thirds of the race, faded to fourth place, his car apparently afflicted by a problem in the final stint.

Hamilton said he felt "the same" as he had after qualifying. He said: "There's a lot going on in the background that is not… great, so…" But added: "I'm sure there are positives to take from the weekend and I'm sure there's learnings."

As is often the case when Hamilton struggles, not only does his mood plumb the depths, but the F1 rumour mill spins into overdrive.

Was Hamilton over the hill, some wondered after qualifying? Would he even quit Ferrari at the end of the year, or perhaps even before the end of the season?

That one, at least, Hamilton rejected, saying he would be back in the car at the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August after F1's summer break.

"I'm looking forward to coming back," he said. "I'll be back, yeah."

Anyone who knows Hamilton, and his determination, and refusal to give up, knows the answers to the other questions about his future, too.

Leclerc's performance, in the wake of some upgrades on the Ferrari car at least gives him some room for optimism.

"Definitely some improvements that have been made on the upgrades," Hamilton said. "Naturally, it's a shame we're not as competitive as the guys at the front, but you've seen Charles has had a really strong run of the last two races.

"The car is definitely progressing, so we have to keep trying to extract more from it."

Team principal Frederic Vasseur injected some perspective into Hamilton's situation.

"For sure when you are seven times world champion, your team-mate is in pole position and you are out in Q2, it's a tough situation," Vasseur said.

On the race result, Vasseur pointed out that Ferrari had gambled on a one-stop strategy starting on the hard tyre on a track where overtaking is notoriously difficult, and it "didn't work."

"I can understand the frustration from Lewis," he said, "but this is normal, and he will come back."

Vasseur, who was instrumental in persuading Hamilton to leave Mercedes to join Ferrari for this season, pointed out that the results in Hungary made his driver's weekend look worse than it was.

Yes, Hamilton had been 0.247 seconds slower than Leclerc when he was knocked out of qualifying after the second session. But Leclerc himself had found it hard to progress, and Hamilton had been just 0.155secs adrift of his team-mate in the first session.

The past two races have seen a stall in the positive momentum Hamilton had been building after a difficult start to his Ferrari career.

Since Miami in early May, there has been little to choose between the two drivers in qualifying, and Hamilton out-qualified Leclerc in three of the four races before Belgium, a week before qualifying.

Two errors of different kinds in the qualifying sessions for the sprint and grand prix at Spa made Hamilton look uncompetitive when he was anything but.

Hamilton was a match for Leclerc on pace in Belgium, but an off followed by a spin caused by a combination of factors relating to a new braking material saw him out in the first session in sprint qualifying, and the same thing happened when he misjudged the exit of the 180mph+ swerves at Eau Rouge and went slightly outside track limits in qualifying for the grand prix.

Even with the problems in Belgium and Hungary, and the need to adapt to a new car of very different characteristics at the start of the season, Hamilton's average qualifying deficit to Leclerc is 0.146 seconds this year.

That's not what Hamilton would expect of himself, but it should be viewed in the context of that Ferrari - and many others in F1 - regard Leclerc as the fastest driver over a single lap in the world.

Hamilton's critics point to his struggles against George Russell in his final season at Mercedes last year.

The 40-year-old has found the ground-effect cars introduced into F1 in 2022 do not fit his late-braking style as well as the previous generation of cars. And it does remain a mystery that he has not been able to adapt as well as would have been expected, or apparently as well as other drivers.

But Vasseur rejected any idea that he might be worried about Hamilton's situation.

"He's demanding," Vasseur said, "but I think it's also why he's seven times world champion, that he's demanding with the team, with the car, with the engineers, with the mechanics, with myself also. But first of all he's very demanding with himself."

Toto Wolff, Hamilton's former team boss at Mercedes, was asked about Hamilton's downbeat self-assessment.

"That is Lewis wearing his heart on the sleeve," he said. "It's what he thought very much when he was asked after the session. It was very raw.

"He was doubting himself, and we had it in the past when he felt that he underperformed his own expectations and your team-mate is on pole, and he's been that emotionally transparent since he was a young boy or young adult."

As for Hamilton's general performances, Wolff said: "He's the GOAT, and he will always be the GOAT, and nobody's going to take that away. That's something he needs to always remember, that he's the greatest of all times.

"Lewis has unfinished business in Formula 1. In the same way that Mercedes underperformed over this latest set of regulations since 2022, we kind of never got happy with ground-effect cars. And in the same way, it bit him.

"Maybe it's linked to driving style. So he shouldn't go anywhere. Next year is brand new cars, completely different to drive, new power-units that need an intelligent way of managing the energy."

Can Hamilton still win that elusive eighth title, Wolff was asked?

"If he has a car underneath him that he has confidence in, that does what he wants, then yes," he replied.

"If he has a car that it's not giving him the feedback that he wants, and that was the Mercedes of the past few years, and that seems to be the Ferrari, and even worse, then not.

"But you ask me whether he has it, he definitely has it."