Lewis Hamilton has admitted he believed he was lucky to achieve second place in the Malaysian Grand Prix after a difficult weekend that culminated in the Mercedes driver being comprehensively outpaced by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who won in Sepang.
Hamilton extended his lead in the Formula One world championship over his rival, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, to 34 points but he has also insisted his team have a major task ahead of them to ensure he has the best possible chance of securing his fourth title in the remaining five races.
The Englishman was overtaken by Verstappen early in the race and proved unable to match the Dutch driver’s speed, ultimately coming home ahead of the second Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo. Vettel had started last but displayed very strong form to make fourth and Hamilton accepted that his car had simply not been good enough.
“We definitely have work to do, that is for sure. It was the best I could really do,” he said. “There are definitely positives in terms of the actual result we got. It was a bit fortunate, a bit lucky for us.”
Having brought upgrades to the race, Mercedes had been struggling to make their car work and Hamilton did not believe they had performed as well as he expected. “There is stuff you don’t even know about that has been happening through the weekend that is not acceptable for this great team and we all know that and need to work on those areas.”
The team have previously described their car as a “diva” but had been confident they were on top of its demands. Sepang proved to be a strident wake-up call and that it was being heeded was evident in that there was a palpable sense of relief from Hamilton rather than satisfaction at extending his lead.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do with this car so, considering the issues we did have, I think this is a good result,” Hamilton said. “We do have some big problems with it. There’s still work to do to try and fix it but I think it’s a fundamental issue with this year’s car.”
With the next race at Suzuka on Sunday he was positive that the post-race discussion on their problems had proved fruitful at Mercedes. “I feel positive, the debrief was one of the best debriefs we have had. Period,” he said.
“It is often the case that, when you have a win, there is not a lot to say and everyone is riding on positives. When you have a difficult day, when the shit really hits the fan, that is when there are more questions and you go into more detail.”
The Mercedes executive director, Toto Wolff, was blunt in his concern at the lack of form his team displayed. “I am very down. You cannot look at it and say we have scored more points than Ferrari,” he said. “We have lost so much pace this weekend. We were half a minute down to Ferrari. If Max had pushed to the end we would have been half a minute down on Max.
“If you look at the real pace today we would have been P5, and that is worrisome. Let’s see what happens in Suzuka. We have a couple of days to try and understand.”
The Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, however, was hugely pleased with his 20-year-old winning driver and his team on the occasion of their second victory of the Formula One season.
“To beat Mercedes fair and square was beyond our expectation,” Horner said. “Max has endured so much bad luck this year and the race he drove today was absolutely dominant. He did a great job in managing it. He sounded really cool out there.”
