Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes Motorsport boss Toto Wolff admitted concerns over the team’s lack of pace during the Malaysian Grand Prix, as Max Verstappen beat the Briton to claim victory.
The triple world champion was able to claim a somewhat unexpected pole in qualifying on Saturday, but the lack of competitiveness over a long run in practice was repeated on Sunday as the Brackley-based team was arguably the third fastest behind Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari.
Typically, hot conditions and softer compounds haven’t suited Mercedes and that trend continued over the last two weekends in Singapore and Sepang, with Hamilton acknowledging the team has to keep trying to address the main weaknesses.
“I feel good but we have some work to do with the car,” he said after finishing second. “We didn’t have the pace here this weekend. There are still races ahead and some we can win, but we’ve got to keep pushing.
“I struggled on both sets [of tyre compound in the race],” he added, “the car was good in some places and in some others, the issues we have with the car are magnified. There is still work to do – but it is a fundamental issue with this year’s car.”
As for Wolff, he was more concerned about the wild variation in performance from the Mercedes car which was described as a “diva” earlier this year after the difficulties in Monaco.
“How can a car that is so fast on so many circuits, lose so much with a tyre that is overheating?” he pondered. “If Max would have pushed to the end we would have been half a minute down.
“If you look at the real pace today then it would have been P5 and that is worrisome. Let’s see what happens in Suzuka we’ve got a couple of days of trying to understand, to put this completely different plan out.”
The Austrian does expect an improvement at the next race in Japan where conditions and track type and more expected to suit Mercedes but: “I’m just very down,” he added. “I must say because you cannot just say ‘well we’ve scored more points than Ferrari’ – we’ve lost so much pace this weekend.”
