Lewis Hamilton was in downbeat mood after his difficult race in Spain, but remained adamant that his Mercedes team could solve its current problems with race performance.
Hamilton tumbled from second on the grid to 12th at the chequered flag, his early progress not helped by a glitch at his first stop that saw him get a late signal to leave. However inevitably tyres were the main problem for the Briton.
“There was no grip today, just sliding around on all fours,” he said. “Just tip-toeing around, basically. It doesn’t matter whether I go slow or go fast, it doesn’t do anything different. It’s very, very strange, one of the strangest feelings I’ve had for a long time.
“It was clear that something was not right when I was behind the Toro Rosso and behind the Williams, because we are obviously so much quicker in qualifying. Clearly something was majorly wrong.”
Hamilton admitted that the team is unsure of what to do to solve its problems.
“It’s something we had a long discussion about just now. We’ve just got to try and understand where we went wrong, and how we can improve it for the upcoming races.
“But it’s something to do with how you prepare the tyres, or use the tyres, or something like that. It seemed to work quite well in Bahrain, but it didn’t work here. It’s something that we haven’t quite caught on to just yet.”
He said it was too early to focus on the next race in Monaco: “I’m not really thinking about that at the moment. I’m just thinking about how I can improve the team, how we can correct it. I’m going to do absolutely everything I can with these guys to really put it back together. We’ve clearly got a great car, it’s clearly a fantastic team, and there’s nothing I don’t believe we can’t solve.
“Like I said, I’m not really thinking about Monaco. I’ve really got to try and digest what’s happened today. Falling from second to 12th, that’s a big drop. I just need to go back with the guys and really question all of the engineers that we have, put ideas into their heads, and get ideas from them about what we can do to improve next time we go out.”
He remains confident that the problem will eventually be solved.
“It’s not rocket science… I don’t know why it’s taken us so long to grab hold of it, but clearly Ferrari have, and so have the Lotuses figured it out. We just need to do that. I’m sure we will at some point.
“I think if we just all pull together, which we have been doing all year, but now it’s more important than ever, particularly after a race like this. We just need to take a step back, look at what happened today objectively, and try to figure it out.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Lewis needs to ring up Schumi to bring him up to speed on how long it has been taking Mercedes to get a handle on this problem.
interesting that Lewis does not directly lay the blame at the feet of Pirelli and instead has suggested that Mercedes are just not “there” yet in understanding the tires. it is another sign of his maturity as a driver that his is more focused on solving the issue instead of complaining about the problem…