Lewis Hamilton believes he could have matched Red Bull’s single-lap pace in Australia, if he had gone out at a similar time to pole sitter Sebastian Vettel.
When asked if he thought their pace was fightening, after Vettel went over six tenths faster, he replied: “I don’t think they had frightening pace in qualifying.
“I think if I was out at the same time and as late as they had gone out, I think I could have matched their time. So I don’t think it was frightening pace. It was a circuit that was drying up.”
The 28-year-old explained that a lack of focus on set-up in Melbourne was likely the reason for their reduced performance during the race – which is an area they will look at in Malaysia.
“We did something with the tyres which put the car more into understeer and unfortunately when we made the change to new tyres it went too far the other way.
“So I went from massive understeer to massive oversteer. We just generally struggled with the balance.
“We didn’t spend a lot of Friday setting up the car because we were testing a lot of components – which was perhaps the wrong way to go. This weekend for example we are going to focus on the set-up – we will make sure we do that.”
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