Lewis Hamilton to meet with Mercedes team over car problems

Lewis Hamilton says he can still win the drivers title despite being 25 points behind Sebastian Vettel. Picture: Getty

The Briton is now 25 points behind leader Sebastian Vettel following the Ferrari driver’s third victory from the opening six rounds of the season in Monaco.

Hamilton, who hosted a star-studded party in the principality on Sunday evening, was remarkably upbeat after his disappointing performance at the most famous race on the Formula One calendar. But the triple world champion admitted he can ill afford another off-colour weekend if he is to halt Vettel’s charge.

Hamilton’s season has been blighted by an ongoing struggle to get this year’s new Pirelli tyres in the optimum operating window, and thus extracting the maximum performance from his Mercedes car.

Indeed his victory in Spain earlier this month has been sandwiched by a distant fourth-place finish in Russia and now seventh in Monte Carlo, too. Oddly, it is not an issue which is effecting his team-mate Valtteri Bottas.

“We have definitely got to improve our understanding of the car and see if we can do a better job,” said Hamilton, who is due at Mercedes’ Northamptonshire factory on Thursday. “We are all under no illusion that we are not perfect and that we still have got areas to improve on.

“There are so many different things we need to look into, to try and understand why one car can make the tyres work and the other cannot.

“Trust me, I will be pushing, and the guys will be pushing to fully understand it because we don’t want to be in this position again. One more race  like this and we will be much further behind.”

Vettel’s victory in Monaco was significantly aided by Ferrari’s strategy which enabled the championship leader to get ahead of his team-mate and pole-sitter Kimi Raikkonen during their only round of pit stops.

Hamilton suggested that Ferrari’s tactics provided the most obvious evidence yet that Vettel is being given preferential treatment by the Italian marque this season. But the Briton insists he has no plans to seek No 1 status at Mercedes for the remaining 14 races.

“I haven’t spoken to the team and don’t plan to,” Hamilton added. “Valtteri has been doing a great job and don’t feel like we have to favour one over the other. I still believe we can win this thing. Twenty five points is a long way away and it is hard just to get to six points and be within firing range, but bit by bit we will try to chip away at it.”

Hamilton will now head to Montreal for the next stop on the grand prix calendar a week on Sunday.

It is a track which has proved kind to the Briton in the past. He won his first race there back in 2007 and it is an event which he has gone on to win a further four times.

However, Ferrari’s resurgence this season, and Hamilton’s car troubles, makes a sixth victory far from a foregone conclusion.

“I like the notion of underdog because the underdog is the one that people want to see win,” Hamilton’s Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said.

“We are the underdog. We need to catch up. And this is the new reality at the moment.”