Lewis Hamilton denied a culture of blame exists at Ferrari following CEO John Elkann’s public criticism of its drivers.

After the team fell two places to fourth in the championship in Brazil, Elkann said Hamilton and team mate Charles Leclerc should “focus on driving and talk less, because we still have important races ahead of us, and it is not impossible to achieve second place.”

Hamilton downplayed Elkann’s comments when asked about them ahead of this weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix. “We’ve just been focused on doing our job back at the factory,” he told the official Formula 1 channel. “Everyone’s super-focused on improving.

“I speak to John every week, we have an amazing relationship and the passion has not disappeared from our team. We’ve obviously got a steep hill to climb, but we want to finish off strong this year.”

Elkann contrasted Ferrari’s success in the World Endurance Championship with its performance in Formula 1. He also praised the team’s technical division, saying “we have mechanics who are winning the championship with their performance” and “if we look at our engineers, there is no doubt that the car has improved.”

However Hamilton does not feel he and Leclerc have been singled out for blame over the team’s performance this year.

“I don’t feel like there’s a blame culture here,” he said. “We’re all in the same boat. Ultimately we all have to take accountability and responsibility, absolutely all of us, and every single one of us have to play our part.”

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The former Mercedes driver insisted: “I firmly believe in the decision I made to come here.”

“I back my team 100% and I back myself still 100%,” said Hamilton. “I know it hasn’t been a good year for us, there have been so many learnings and I think just for me personally, I feel like I’ve grown so much this year. I’m standing here stronger than I feel like I’ve ever been and just dead set on trying to finish off strong in these last few races.”

“It was very difficult at some points during the year, but I really feel like I’ve surprised myself in terms of resilience,” he added. “I still feel very, very positive. I still feel very determined, very dedicated to the challenge that we have and I just really see that every challenge that we have is an opportunity to learn and grow.

“It has been the most challenging year and it’s definitely not a year that no one would ever dream of, especially in your first year at the special Ferrari. But we take the learnings from every single weekend and I really feel that we’re going to take the learnings from this year to build and grow on to something better in the future.

“I firmly believe in absolutely every single individual back at the factory, here at the track, who do an extraordinary job every week. They give it 100% and that’s all you can ever ask of people. Of course I’m committed to helping them rebuild and grow back to their winning ways.”

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