Lewis Hamilton admits he never considered trying to overtake Valtteri Bottas during the Australian Grand Prix.

Despite claiming pole, the world champion lost out to his teammate at the start and would eventually finish 20 seconds behind the Finn by the chequered flag.

His slow race pace was questioned, with Sebastian Vettel wondering if Hamilton got "bored" and Mercedes pointing to a small piece of damage on the floor as hurting his pace.

But Lewis himself doubts he would have had the ability to make a move.

“Valtteri had a lot more pace in the car,” the Briton claimed. “But here you need a 1.8-second delta to overtake the car ahead, so as soon as we got through Turn 1 it was really about managing [the pace].

“I was planning to just stay close behind, two, three seconds. Then obviously I had the issue with the car and the gap started to slowly increase and it would have continued to increase.

“But then after that, I was trying to look after the tyres and then I got stopped super-early in reaction to the Ferraris."

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After his pit-stop for the medium C3 tyre, Hamilton then knew his main challenge would come from those on a more conventional strategy.

“I knew from then on the race was done because I had 47 laps [to go], so I knew immediately I was going to be in trouble on the long run," he explained.

"I drove well off the pace to make sure at the end of the race I still had life left in the tyres.

“I knew on those following laps Max and Valtteri were still out and they kept going for laps and laps so I knew at the end I would have someone on my back.

“So rather than push and keep close, struggle with the tyres and at the end have big degradation, which Vettel had which was understandable because his tyres were so old, I was quite happy with the pace I was able to pull out at the end.”