It was a miserable weekend for the reigning champion. After dominating Friday Mercedes found themselves nowhere pace-wise on Saturday and Sunday and were perhaps lucky to come away from Shanghai with a podium.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff believes Lewis Hamilton was off his game this weekend in China. The Brit only managed fourth in qualifying and struggled to a fourth-place finish on Sunday after drama in front elevated him up the order.
“Like the car, he was maybe not in the best place this weekend,” said Wolff.
“He’s the best driver in my opinion, but also the best ones have days when it’s just not 100%.
“And if underneath you have a car that’s not performing as expected, and tyres that are not doing what you think they should do, and then the strategy goes against you…
“Actually we discussed that scenario this morning. Then everything just… goes in the wrong direction.
“We were overheating the tyres. We’re not in a good place. We’re bouncing between freezing and overheating.
“You can see when we hit the sweet spot like we did in Melbourne we are very fast, the lap pace of the car is very good.
“We didn’t hit it yesterday and today we’re just too slow.
“In Formula 1 there is never a quick fix.
“In my opinion this is a great group of people. We just need to stick our heads together, stay calm, get the head down, and come up with solutions.
“(I have) huge confidence in the people. They’ve proved that in the past.”
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