Seven-time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton pointed to a miscommunication at Ferrari after making a late error in Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix.

Hamilton started towards the back of the field in Sao Paulo having been hit with a 75-place grid penalty following multiple changes to his power unit, but made light work of cutting through his F1 rivals in the opening stages.

By lap two, Hamilton had already worked his way back up into the points-paying positions, but his progress then stalled before he began to go backwards.

After urging Ferrari to let him go onto the soft, dry tyres as the track conditions began to change, Hamilton eventually pulled the trigger on lap 15 and it paid off as he recovered lost ground. Later in the race, when rain fell and it was time to switch back on to the intermediates, Hamilton and Ferrari were not so quick.

Hamilton was one of only two cars out on track on the soft tyre when he spun on lap 63 and was very lucky to avoid damage to his Ferrari, eventually able to get his car back on track and bring it home to score a couple of points.

Lewis Hamilton points to Ferrari miscommunication

Post-race, the Ferrari man was asked about his strategy throughout the grand prix, including his early call to go onto softs and why he chose to stay out on the dry tyres for so long at the end despite the conditions continuing to get worse.

"I don't think that was the decisive moment," Hamilton explained on Ferrari not pitting him for dry tyres two laps earlier in the opening stages. "I think there was lots of difficult moments through the race.

"Yes, at that point I wanted to come in because I was struggling on the inter tyre. We had a great start, but then the tyres dropped off."

Hamilton continued, pointing to a lack of communication from his team as to why he was still out on the track on softs in the rain when he spun.

"Where we lost a couple points at the end, I thought the conditions were staying the same," he said. "Because that's the last message that I got, 'The rain will stay like this,' and I was like, 'Okay, these are my conditions, I can keep going'.

"I didn't hear that it was raining more, and so I stayed out an extra lap too long at the end and that made it tricky."

On a day when Max Verstappen finished P2, Hamilton's error saw him lose even more ground in the fight for second in the drivers' standings, with the Brit now P4 and 18 points adrift of the Dutchman heading to Las Vegas.

He is, however, still 10 points clear of Charles Leclerc in P5, and 15 clear of Brazilian Grand Prix race winner Lando Norris in P6.