Hamilton and Leclerc disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix

Hamilton finished the race in sixth place while Leclerc finished in fifth as Ferrari struggled to replicate the form they showed in Sprint qualifying and the Sprint, which Hamilton won from pole.

While they opted for a car setup biased towards race conditions, both Ferrari drivers could not make inroads on Sunday and even clashed at the start of the race, with Leclerc suffering from a broken front wing endplate.

That did not affect the Monegasque's pace as team orders were issued by the Ferrari pitwall asking Hamilton to move aside for his teammate to try and attack Mercedes' George Russell, which was fruitless in the end as Max Verstappen managed to catch and pass the #16 Ferrari towards the end while a two-stop race meant Hamilton finished sixth.

However, matters took a turn for the worse for the Scuderia as post-race checks revealed that Leclerc's car was underweight while Hamilton's most rear skid plate was less than the required thickness.

As a result, the stewards at the Chinese Grand Prix disqualified both cars, which also applied to Pierre Gasly, whose Alpine was also below the required weight in the checks after the race.

Luckily for Ferrari, who opted not to change Leclerc's broken wing during the race, the low weight recorded was done after a new front wing was fixed to the car (according to FIA document 87), so that is not how the Reds shot themselves in the foot.

Ferrari issued a statement following their disqualification, it said: "Following the FIA post-race scrutineering both our cars were found not to conform to the regulations for different reasons.

"Car 16 was found to be underweight by 1 kg and car 44's rearward skid wear was found to be 0.5mm below the limit. Charles was on a one-stop strategy today and this meant his tyre wear was very high, causing the car to be underweight. With regard to Lewis' skid wear, we misjudged the consumption by a small margin.

"There was no intention to gain any advantage," Ferrari assured. "We will learn from what happened today and make sure we don't make the same mistakes again.

"Clearly it's not the way we wanted to end our Chinese GP weekend, neither for ourselves, nor for our fans whose support for us is unwavering," the statement concluded.

Speaking before his disqualification, the seven-time Formula 1 champion said of going with a two-stop strategy, he said: "I’m glad that we tried something. I struggled with performance.

"Ultimately basically we had a pretty decent car in the Sprint and then we made some changes because we were trying to move forwards and improve the car and we made it quite a bit worse, basically, going into qualifying.

"Then it was even worse in the race. So unfortunate but very, very hard to keep up with the guys ahead. But lots learnt.

"The pit stop is too long here, it’s a lot of seconds to catch up, and they were still going fast at the end. Max was doing something similar to me and I had much fresher tyres, so it wasn’t great," he concluded.

As for Leclerc, he refused to point blame in the first-lap clash between him and Hamilton; he said: "Honestly, it's not Lewis' fault at all.

"On my side I was round the inside trying to position the car for Turn Three and Lewis didn't know I was there, I did not expect Lewis to come back taking the apex at the moment he was on the outside, at the end it's a racing incident.

"It's not the first or last time it will happen. It's a shame that it happens between the two red cars but obviously there were no bad intentions from either of us.

"So that was unfortunate and obviously it cost me quite a bit for the rest of the race," Leclerc maintained.

"We are talking about a big, big loss on my car," he added, explaining the effect of losing a front wing endplate. "There was the potential to do a lot better.

"We didn't want to take the eight seconds at the pit stop for changing the front wing because then I would have needed to overtake cars, and we were very weak in Turn 12 and that was making us vulnerable to the cars behind and it was difficult to make any overtakes.

"I think we did well, a shame obviously for the damage," Leclerc concluded.

This means Ferrari threw away 30 points in the F1 constructors' championship.