Outside Line: 126 days ago Hamilton won in China. What went wrong?

The rot started on Friday, when Hamilton made one of the silliest errors of his career. At a time when he really needed to put the car at the sharp end of the grid, he was embarrassingly knocked out in Q1. P18 on the grid for the Sprint Race was never going to be an easy task for the seven-time Formula 1 World Champion.

His DNA is built around racing from the front, much like he did at the height of his powers. His heir to the "King of F1" throne, Verstappen, regardless of the car’s weaknesses, is still fighting for victories.

Hamilton, on the other hand, seems unable lately to mix it up in the midfield, an area of the grid where he has never really toiled for long stretches until now. All this while teammate Charles Leclerc mixes it with the front runners. Yes, the Hamilton-Ferrari combination is in dire, dire straits.

The Englishman is way off the pace of Leclerc, who put the SF-25 P4 in qualifying and finished P4 in the race, even enjoying a proper ding-dong with the McLarens, splitting them at one stage until Lando Norris got by. At the front, Verstappen gave a masterclass in defensive driving, keeping the two McLarens at bay.

After a miserable race in which he only made up two positions, 30 seconds down on the winner at the finish line, Hamilton was a sorry figure as he trundled out of his car. His body language gave it all away. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and right now it’s broken. Much like the Ferrari SF-25, which they still can’t get to operate in a window that unleashes the Briton's undeniable greatness.

But right now, at this phase of Hamilton's career, even his greatest fan (me) has to admit he’s looking poor, and that’s just relative to Leclerc. Shades of last year when George Russell 'owned' the Briton 19-5 in Qualifying. It's 8-4 in favour of Charles in this year's Qualy scrap versus Lewis. The stopwatch does not lie. Remember Seb?

We saw it before at Maranello. Leclerc also effectively ended Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari career when they shared that garage in 2019 and 2020. This isn’t to say Hamilton is finished. Far from it. If anything, he will rise again. We’ve seen that time and again. But he must first tick off F1 Driver Rule #1, beat his teammate, and he’s simply not doing that.

Prior to the race this weekend, Hamilton revealed he’d been in "lots of meetings" with Ferrari’s top brass, trying to galvanise the team. This comes at a time when the Scuderia still hasn’t confirmed Fred Vasseur’s future as team principal, coinciding, notably, with the sudden availability of Christian Horner.

But whatever was said behind closed doors clearly obviously had no immediate effect. Hamilton’s performance these past two days, including an uncharacteristic error in Sprint Qualifying that set him on the back foot, and at the wrong end of the field where he remained. Which proves one thing: meetings don’t make a fast car.

Hard driving and that elusive 'fast car' is what’s required. But if the development is heading in the wrong direction, one has to ask why Leclerc can extract so much more from the same machine.

No doubt these are questions Hamilton will be asking himself, as he ponders how in just four months he’s gone from showing the world what a hero looks like as he did in China, to being a shadow of that driver today.

Fortunately, on a Sprint Race weekend, there’s still Sunday’s Grand Prix to recover. And that’s perhaps where Hamilton, with his five past victories at Spa-Francorchamps, will aim to salvage something. But on current form, he has a mountain of work ahead.

If his Sprint Qualy and Race performances are anything to go by, Sunday might be just as grim for Hamilton, with 'crisis of form' springing to mind.