Lewis Hamilton: “I’m clearly not driving as well as he is…”

Lewis Hamilton was clearly bitterly disappointed after finishing fifth in Japan, and was at a loss to explain his lack of pace.

To be fair his race was badly compromised when he had a slow puncture in the first stint that led to an early first stop. That put him a little bit out of synch for the rest of the race. Matters were not helped by the clash with Felipe Massa, which damaged the car.

However, Lewis was willing to blame himself for the lack of performance.

“My team mate finished first clearly our car was fast enough to win, and I was nowhere near fast enough to compete with anyone today,” he said.

“Today was one of the slowest races I’ve probably ever had in terms of performance. I just need to find out where I lost all that time. Jenson did a fantastic job, and in qualifying I was very close, but in the race I couldn’t hold him to save my life.

“I think it’s me, how I dialled the car in. I don’t know if I dialled the car in as well as he has, maybe. Who knows, but I’m clearly not driving as well as he is. That’s something I can work on.

“My job and my hope is to pick up some pace from somewhere. I was just struggling, I didn’t have any grip. But that’s the way it goes.”

Lewis apologised for the clash with Massa and said he could not see the Brazilian.

“I don’t really know what happened, but I can’t see anything out of my mirrors, they vibrate so much at this race track, I can’t see a thing. So I had no idea he was there. So apologies if we touched.

“It’s the same thing that happened, we always come together, and fortunately nothing bad happened to either of us. It was not intentional. He’s a fantastic driver, he was very quick today, and I was very slow, that’s why he was all over me. I tried my hardest to stay ahead.”