Hamilton: We've not got the best car

Lewis Hamilton increased his championship lead to 34 points over title rival Sebastian Vettel, but the Mercedes driver was downbeat after the Malaysian Grand Prix as it dawned on him that he could have inflicted so much more damage on the Ferrari driver's championship aspirations but simply did not have the car to do so.

Asked if he was happy with second place after the race at Sepang, Hamilton replied, "Considering Vettel started last, it's not really that great to be honest. We should have won today but we didn't have the pace. We knew coming into the race that we didn't have the quickest car. Our deltas showed Ferrari were eight tenths faster and Red Bull were five or six tenths faster than us and they were."

Hamilton led from pole position with eventual race winner Max Verstappen stalking him. When the Red Bull driver pounced at the end of the start straight, aided with DRS, Hamilton hardly reacted to the move let alone defend it.

"There's wasn't really much I could do there. I really had to make a decision when Max was closing down. I had to make the decision to not fight him and risk him coming into me because you know he's going to give it everything whereas I had everything to lose. I didn't make it very hard for him."

"At the end of the second stint it was looking a little bit better but the car was still having big problems at certain corners and I think Max was juts managing the pace. I don't think we had the pace."

"There is a lot of work for us to do. But there's nothing we can do, it's the way the car is. People have been saying all year long that we've got the best car. It's a fact at some races that the car has turned out to be better but overall, globally, I think it's worked out that we've not got the best car."

"We've done an exceptional job with what we have. There are some really big problems which I can't really explain to you what they are but we really need to make sure we rectify them for next year's cars if we really want to fight both Ferrari and Red Bull when they step up their game."

"I don't know which one of these next races are going to be good for us but we'll do everything we can to try and stay ahead," added Hamilton who heads to the Japanese Grand Prix with 281 points, followed by Vettel on 247 points with five rounds remaining in the championship.