The Mercedes driver had gone into the Suzuka race hopeful that the workforce might construct on some promising potential proven in follow with a brand new set-up route for the W15.
However he was placed on the again foot nearly instantly from the restart of the red-flagged race after a minor conflict with Charles Leclerc within the opening sequence of corners left him with automobile injury.
That meant he suffered from extreme understeer, and defined why he was so comfortable to maneuver over for team-mate George Russell, who had closed in on him within the first stint, a couple of laps later.
Talking to F1 about whether or not the automobile had not delivered what had hoped for within the race, Hamilton stated: “I imply, the automobile is rarely what I might [have] hoped it might be. It is by no means what we would hoped it might be.
“I acquired some injury within the first stint within the restart with Charles, and I had large understeer, like enormous, enormous understeer. In order that’s why I made a decision to let George by, as a result of he appeared faster.
“I simply could not flip the automobile, and it took us two stints to lastly dial increasingly wing in to make up for that loss. Final stint I used to be higher, but it surely was too late. I had 10 seconds to regain.”
Whereas Hamilton had been massively inspired by a brand new discovered confidence within the W15 that Mercedes’ contemporary set-up route had given it, he was clear that he was not leaving Japan feeling too upbeat about issues.
“I do not know should you can take many positives from the weekend,” he stated.
“I imply the automobile has completed which is sweet. However we’re like you already know seventh, eighth, ninth quickest…”
Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin stated the squad’s weekend had successfully been wrecked by its poor qualifying efficiency, the place neither driver had been in a position to extract as a lot from their automobile as they might have appreciated.
“We weren’t fast sufficient in qualifying so had been beginning too far again to problem for the rostrum,” he defined. “Early within the race, our tempo was merely not adequate too.
“We might determined to go to the arduous tyre on the crimson flag as we felt there wasn’t a lot risk from behind, and it was our greatest strategy to offset and check out one thing completely different.
“In direction of the tip of that stint we had been actually battling low grip. We could not cease early as there was an excessive amount of visitors within the window, so we stayed out till we had cleared it. Sadly by then, we had misplaced a piece of time. The second and third stints had been extra encouraging, however we would misplaced an excessive amount of time by that time to get again into the combo.
“We all know that we’re not fast sufficient in the meanwhile, so we’ll proceed [to] work arduous to enhance that. Regardless of the difficult outcome, it has been a helpful weekend to be taught extra about our automobile and develop our understanding of the W15.”
