SUZUKA, Japan -- Lewis Hamilton said Ferrari has found something on his car that has resulted in a performance deficit at the opening three races of the season and is optimistic he will make a step forward if it can be fixed at the next race in Bahrain.
Hamilton has experienced a mixed start to his Ferrari career, with a tenth place finish at the opening round in Australia, a sprint race win in China the following weekend, a disqualification from the Chinese Grand Prix itself, and a seventh-place finish at the Japanese Grand Prix on Sunday.
The team estimates it is between 0.3 and 0.4 seconds off the pace of front runners McLaren, but Hamilton revealed he has also been struggling with a problem specific to his car.
"I'm really hoping in the next race we'll see some positive changes," Hamilton said on Sunday in Japan. "Through the first three races, there's been a bit of a deficit between both sides of the garage on an element of the car -- on my side something underperforming.
"So with what we had, that was the best result we could get."
He added: "I'm losing just over a tenth a lap with the issue we have. I'm hoping at the next race it's fixed."
Hamilton's teammate Charles Leclerc finished fourth in Japan with the two Mercedes driver George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli splitting the Ferraris.
"I think considering what I said, it was maximum today," Hamilton said. "I didn't have anything else in the car. Performance is missing at the rear of the car this weekend.
"And obviously qualifying position is key. I think I probably would have been overtaken by McLarens and the Mercedes too if I was any further ahead.
"And I'm hoping the next race could be, somehow ... we can get a bit closer."
Hamilton said Ferrari had a lot of work to close the gap to the front of the grid as the season progresses.
"We will slowly progress the car," he said. "It will be interesting to see when people get upgrades over the season.
"We've got a lot of work to do to be able to close the gap into the top cars, the top guys, they've probably got three or four tenths on us, so we've got a lot of work to bring upgrades for that."
After Ferrari made solid progress over the course of last season, team principal Fred Vasseur stressed that performance would come from various different sources rather than one quick fix.
"If last year, we did a good step forward from the beginning of the season to mid-season, it's not that we found a magic bullet," Vasseur said. "You will never find something on the car at three or four-tenths.
"One year ago, we were almost in the same situation, perhaps a bit worse in terms of pace and reaction of the team was very, very strong.
"We worked as a team. We made small step by small step and we have to keep exactly the same approach this season. But for sure, it's not ideal, and I would prefer to have won the first two or three races."
Leclerc said the Japanese Grand Prix weekend had been useful for his understanding of the car.
"I think I learned plenty about the car this weekend, so that is the positive of the weekend really," Leclerc said.
"As much as we are disappointed with the fourth place, we should be happy of us maximising the result and we should be happy about all the lessons learned this weekend.
"Friday [practice] I think was a really, really good day for that. I really went in quite extreme directions in an idea that I've had since two or three weeks. I wanted to try it and it worked out, so I was really happy with that."