Lewis Hamilton admitted a maiden Ferrari Grand Prix victory this year may be nothing but a pipe dream. The Brit won his first Sprint race with the Scuderia earlier this season, but that has been one of few highlights in a difficult campaign to date.

Seven-time Formula 1 world champion Hamilton has found it difficult to adapt to his new surroundings and continues to struggle to get to grips with his car. The nadir of the year came just before the summer break, at the Hungarian Grand Prix when the 40-year-old declared himself "useless" and suggested the team would be better off without him.

Results have continued to be underwhelming in recent weeks. He returned to action at the Dutch Grand Prix but left Zandvoort pointless after crashing out of the race, before a grid penalty hampered his efforts at Monza where he qualified fifth, was dropped to 10th on the starting grid and recovered to finish sixth.

But Hamilton has been in a better place and more positive about the improvement he feels both he and the team have been making. Regardless, he admits he still has a long way to go and, speaking in Baku ahead of this weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix, played down his chances of winning a race before the year is out.

Hamilton said: " A win is a bit far-fetched [in the remaining races] given I have been sixth, seventh and eighth for most of the season. I would love to get a podium for the team at some stage. Charles [Leclerc] has had four or five of them.

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"I feel optimistic coming into the weekend. I feel like I have found a couple of things, and now I need to work on extracting them. So I really hope that this weekend can be the start of that. I think [the Ferrari has] got more mechanical grip and it is a lot softer than the cars that I have driven here before."

His team-mate Leclerc has never won at Baku before, though it remains one of his favourite venues and has qualified on pole on each of his last four visits. Making it five in a row will be difficult, the Monegasque believes, as he named McLaren as "the team to beat" on Saturday.

Leclerc added: "Red Bull in Monza were very impressive with Max [Verstappen], I think they probably found something and brought new things with the car that made them do a big step forward, so I think they will also be up there with McLaren. I think we will be behind them.

"But it is a track that I particularly like and in which I have been performing particularly well in qualifying over one lap. In the race, it is a bit more difficult to hide the true performance of the car, but we will do our best and see what is possible."