Lando Norris claims he is 'fighting a losing battle' at McLaren after finishing fifth at the Japanese Grand Prix.
The Brit qualified in third position on Saturday but dropped behind Ferrari duo Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc when it came to the race.
Norris claimed a podium finish last time out at the Australian Grand Prix but it never really looked on in Suzuka.
The McLaren star admitted he gave it everything he had but it was just not enough to outdo the Ferraris.
Norris told Sky Sports: "It was a tough race. Compared to the Ferraris, just not enough. I think everything fell back in line in terms of Red Bull, Ferrari and us.
"It's a shame. It doesn't feel great when you start third and go backwards. It feels like you are fighting a losing battle against these guys because they can just do a lot more.
"They can go longer and extend and have a bigger tyre delta. It's hard to fight.
"We gave it a good shot and did what we could. We got the maximum points apart from the top two teams, which was all we could do.
"Charles did a good job to go that far on one set of tyres. It surprised me we boxed as early as we did because that put it in line with what Ferrari did.
"We covered George [Russell], which I think we didn't need to do. This is something we will discuss after in the briefing.
"Maybe a discussion, if we could have done a better job for P4 but it's always difficult to make those decisions at the time, so tough.
"Ferrari is clearly ahead. They have been ahead all year. They are still ahead.
"We've not changed anything all year, so there's no reason we should be ahead."
Norris' McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri finished eighth after being overtaken by George Russell in the closing stages.
He admitted he made a mistake but agreed with Norris that McLaren didn't have the speed to compete.
Piastri said: "Not really for the positions that I’d want to be fighting, for sure. Just struggled a bit with the tyres.
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"I think we just didn’t really have the pace of the cars around us, so we just need to dig into why a bit.
"I could tell by the way he was using the energy I could tell he was trying to keep me in his DRS, so George couldn’t pass me and attack him.
"I knew exactly what he was doing but I just made a bit of a mistake into the last chicane, locked up a bit and that was it.
"I think today showed that we still have some work to do. We’re clearly not quite at the level of Ferrari yet, so just need to find a little bit more.
"I think also for myself, it’s not been the greatest of weekends, so also need to look internally but I think, for sure, we need to find a little bit of a pace in the car as well."
