Lewis Hamilton bemoaned Mercedes becoming “slower” relative to the competition across Formula 1’s Italian Grand Prix weekend as he came home in a distant fifth.
Mercedes appeared on course to bounce back from a torrid outing at Zandvoort when Hamilton topped the times in the second and third practice sessions at Monza.
But although he also set the quickest time in the second segment of qualifying, Hamilton blasted his attempts in Q3 as he wound up a disappointing sixth on the grid.
Hamilton managed to gain a single place at the start when team-mate George Russell, who qualified third, got his braking wrong at Turn 1 and cut across the chicane.
However, the seven-time F1 champion was powerless to match either the Ferrari or McLaren drivers as he ended up 22.8 seconds behind race winner Charles Leclerc.
Hamilton has conceded that excessive tyre degradation compounded Mercedes’ difficulties as it didn’t boast the outright speed to maintain pace with the cars ahead.
“My qualifying performance at the end and then just race pace, we had more degradation and just generally lacking one or two-tenths in the race,” Hamilton explained.
Hamilton suspects that obtaining a higher starting position on the grid would have given him a strong chance to beat Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who was 7.2s up the road.
“I probably could have finished ahead of one Ferrari if I had been further ahead,” he estimated.
Hamilton has proclaimed that Mercedes must understand the reasons behind the team not being able to match the strides that its rivals made later into the weekend.
Asked about how his Mercedes W15 car was during the race, Hamilton replied: “Yeah, it was okay. It was nothing special.
“Again, it’s just like you’re either not graining the left front or you’re graining the left rear.
“We just didn’t have the pace. We had to go and look and try to understand why.
“Also because we looked better on Friday than we did. We got almost slower through the weekend or others got faster or we were too light and they were heavy.”
Mercedes went into the summer break having taken three victories in four races, but that encouragement has been dissipated in the two races since the resumption.
Hamilton has divulged that the Brackley-based squad has more upgrades scheduled in the pipeline, although he is unsure of how big the upcoming packages will be.
“We definitely have [updates coming], there’s definitely some performance to come over the course of the next few races,” he disclosed.
“I don’t know if we’ll get there [to the front], but we do have small bits. I don’t know if we have anything huge coming, but hopefully we have some more.”
Hamilton, who has triumphed in Britain and Belgium this term, is hopeful that Mercedes’ new parts will inspire him to another win before his move to Ferrari in 2025.
“If we make some progress there’ll be some tracks that will be a little bit better than we are here,” he assessed.
“I hope that we have another chance to fight for a win at some stage.”
