Despite their qualifying let-down, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc take positives away from Austin.

The Monegasque finished second, following a strong opening stint on the softs, though he admitted race leader Kimi Antonelli had superior pace on the mediums, while teammate Lewis Hamilton finished fourth, his opening stint compromised by the fact he was on used softs.

"I didn't have a new tyre to start on, so it put me a bit on the back foot compared to the cars ahead of me," explained the seven-time world champion. "So, I had a little bit more deg in that first stint than they did.

"A new tyre to a used tyre is about two seconds of race pace," he continued, "so I lost that in the first stint.

"Balance was my biggest issue," he revealed, "the balance was off. But I think the team did a great job in the stops and the strategy.

"Charles obviously did a great job this weekend for us, it's good for points to be ahead of McLaren so we can keep second in the Constructors' Championship.

"I've really got to try to extract more from this car in the next couple of races," he admitted. "I do believe I could be quicker if we could just get the set-up right. It wasn't far off - well it was at the beginning of the stint - and I just need to look into how we get to that conclusion and how I end up in that situation because it's happened a few times, like in Silverstone for example.

"I couldn't keep up with Charles because he had much more front wing than I did and then I couldn't turn the car. It was the same today."

"The hard was just a really good tyre," added Leclerc, who ran all three compounds over the course of the race, "and I could push on it quite a lot.

"I was more interested in trying to... I kept asking my engineer what the pace of Kimi was, but I was probably a bit too optimistic. I wanted to give it a shot, but, yeah, I probably lost a bit too much time with Max and Lando.

"Even with free air, I don't think I would have got to Kimi," he admitted. "He was just too quick today."

However, the Monegasque points to qualifying as where Ferrari's weekend fell apart.

"If you look at FP1, FP2 and FP3, we were very strong. If you look at qualifying, at the end of the day in Q3, it was extremely difficult to bring the tyres up to temperature, and we probably lost a shot at the victory there. Today Kimi was very strong, but as a whole weekend, I think we're just not robust enough."

Qualifying aside, Leclerc has scored two successive podiums and, like his teammate, is poised to overhaul George Russell in the standings. Asked if his run of form can continue, he replied: "I think so, but only time will tell. I think in the last three, four races we had upgrades on the car in a direction that I quite like, that we are pushing in, and it makes me feel a bit more confident with the car and so I'm optimistic for the future.

"It's also true that we are at the end of the season," he added. "We are not expecting to bring anything, any big upgrades. But now it's all about optimising what we have, and we are not in a bad place, so I'm looking forward to see how it will be like on different tracks in the next two weeks.

"Today, Mercedes saw something that maybe Red Bull and I didn't really consider seriously, which was the one-stop and they made it work very nicely. So, this is something we'll have to analyse but the whole race has been very good. And anyway, I think if we were on a one-stop, it wouldn't have changed much the results."

For team boss Fred Vasseur it was a weekend of mixed emotions however.

"I don't know if you had all the radio, but very early in the race, Charles was targeting P1," the Frenchman told reporters. "And when you do P2 and you target P1, you are not happy. But this I like as a feeling.

"Honestly, at the end of the weekend, I think it's a good week," he continued, "a good result for us for the third or fourth race in a row, we are the team scoring the biggest amount of points.

"I think we are on the right way, but for sure, when you have this feeling that you are in a good shape on the weekend and you do P2, you can have also a bit of frustration. But the frustration sometimes is good."

Asked about strategy, he said: "Today I think that it was between one and two stops. We had to be aggressive starting from P4, P5. It was a good call from us.

"When you start a bit behind, you start to have the dirty air, and you have to be a bit more aggressive. And without perhaps the VSC at the end, Lewis was perhaps able to come back on Max, I don't know. Probably yes.

"But overall, I think it's a good weekend in terms of pace, execution. Everything went well, except the last lap in Q3.

"If you have a look on Saturday, I think it was quite particular, that the two McLarens didn't improve, Russell didn't improve, the two Red Bulls didn't improve.

"I think what is true is that with the cars or the tyres, the window is very narrow, and as soon as you are a bit out, quickly you lose two or three tenths. And today in F1 in the top eight, two or three tenths can be a sixth position.

"It means that you can move from the super result to nowhere for gust of wind, or you slide a little bit too much in the out lap, or you have to slow down, as we had the case in Madrid, you have to slow down a little bit, don't stick to your pace in the out lap, or whatever, the impact is huge."

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