Hamilton will have team talk in bid to get his Mercedes back on pace

● Struggles have allowed Vettel to build lead but Briton has good record in Montreal

Lewis Hamilton will sit down with his Mercedes team in the coming days as he attempts to get on top of the car problems which are threatening to derail his challenge for a fourth world drivers’ title.

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 starstudded 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

0 Lewis Hamilton says he can still win the drivers’ title despite being 25 points behind Sebastian Vettel. 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 needtocatchup.andthisisthe new reality at the moment.” Takuma Sato had victory in sight once before at the Indianapolis 500. When he attempted a last-lap pass, Sato lost control of his car, crashed and Scotland’s Dario Franchitti went on to his third victory.

In nearly the same position five years later, Sato leaned on lessons learned in that 2012 defeat and became the first Japanese driver to win the Indianapolis 500.

“I do feel after 2012 that I really needed to correct something I left over,” Sato said. “In 2012, going into Turn 1 with Dario was a big risk. But you always learn something from those situations, and this time we proved we had what it takes.”

In winning for just the second time in Indycar, Sato had to hold off Helio Castroneves over the closing laps on Sunday to deny the veteran a record-tying fourth Indianapolis 500 victory. The two swapped the lead, and Castroneves made one last attempt at a pass for the win that he couldn’t make stick.

“When Helio was coming with three laps to go, on a big charge into Turn 1, we went side-by-side,” Sato said. “But this time I ended up still pointing in the right direction and still leading. It was job done, and the last two laps the car worked beautifully.”

The win was the second ina row for Andretti Autosport in the Indy 500 and third in the last four years. An Andretti driver has now won the 500 five times overall dating BACK to 2005 with the late Dan Wheldon. Last year, it was rookie Alexander Rossi. This time it was Sato, who joined the team this season. The Andretti camp expanded to six cars for the 500 to add Fernando Alonso, a two-time F1 world champion who brought massive European interest to the race.

Six cars never seemed to spread the team too thin, and the main issue facing Andretti Autosport was the reliability of its Honda engines. Alonso put on a thrilling show and even led 27 laps but he was sent to the paddock when his engine blew with 20 laps remaining.