“I’m still there, but we are falling behind bit by bit, and I’ve lost a lot of
points. We have to focus on trying not to lose any more from now on.
“I have to go back to the drawing board, find out where we are losing time and
work on that.
“It’s tough for us, but we will keep pushing, keep fighting.”
Hamilton admitted his start was not one of the best, with the 27-year-old just
avoiding behind him the early chaos when Lotus’ Romain Grosjean collided
with Michael Schumacher in his Mercedes, sending the former spinning out.
After that, a slow pit stop in comparison to that of Alonso and Vettel
resulted in him losing the two places prior to the train-like conclusion to
a race in which there was minimal overtaking.
“It wasn’t frustrating, but it wasn’t the best result,” said Hamilton.
“I don’t know how long my pit stop was, it was quite a long time, but I wasn’t
able to keep up with Alonso, and then Sebastian got me in his pit stop.
After that it was impossible to overtake.
“I really dislike going backwards, but nonetheless we came away with some
points and there are many more races ahead of us, so we have to try and keep
our heads up.”
Bizarrely, Hamilton bemoaned an unusual occurrence in which the numbers on the
pit boards that provide drivers with information as to their position and
laps remaining, fell on him during the race.
“It was strange,” said Hamilton. “All the guys holding pitboards,
particularly at the beginning coming out of the last corner, about two or
three of the slips fell out and hit me in the front of my helmet.
“I don’t know if it happened to anyone else, but I was like ‘this is getting
ridiculous’, and they kept dropping them and dropping them, and there was
some on the floor.
“I was saying ‘someone do something about it’ because my visor was getting
worse and worse. They need to do a better job in securing those.”