Lewis: Car messes with my mind

LEWIS HAMILTON admitted his malfunctioning Mercedes ‘messes with his mind’. Any improvement in his machinery is hard to detect, despite a supposed new design for this season.

The seven-time world champion has been more involved in the latest, W15 concept — asking for his sitting position to be moved back — than with other recent cars, but with no joy. He has qualified eighth, ninth, and here, 11th. George Russell, Hamilton’s team-mate, has out-qualified him at each race this season, setting the seventh best time yesterday.

Hamilton finished seventh in Bahrain and ninth in Saudi Arabia, beaten by Ferrari’s British debutant, 18-year-old Ollie Bearman. Ahead of the Australian

Grand Prix, which was due to take place in the early hours of this morning, Hamilton said: ‘The inconsistency in the car messes with the mind. George did a good job, and I have to try to do better. There is a long list of things to fix.

‘Our car is on a knife edge. In the afternoon the wind picks up and the car becomes unstable. But the others can pick their pace up in qualifying and I am not sure why.’

Hamilton, who will join Ferrari next season (for reasons becoming increasingly evident), added: ‘It is three years in a row where I have had a similar feeling. There are spikes like this morning when I think the car can be good, and then it disappears.’

Team principal Toto Wolff, who knows he is in danger of turning into a stuck record, said: ‘It’s especially underwhelming because we were within a tenth in practice.

‘The conditions were a little bit different in qualifying, but there is no excuse.’