Hamilton: Ferrari and Sebastian did an amazing job

World champion Lewis Hamilton started the Malaysian Grand Prix from pole position and many expected him to win the race, but the script changed dramatically out of his favour and the Mercedes driver had to be content with second place after seeing Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari claim victory at Sepang. Hamilton spoke after the race.

That was a surprise and you weren’t very happy with your car, we could hear what you were saying to your engineers. Tell us what was going on there?
Lewis Hamilton: Well, firstly, huge congratulations to Ferrari and Sebastian, they did an amazing job. Jeez, they had some good pace today. I gave it everything I could; we did as a team. We knew coming into this weekend that they had made a step, we didn’t know how big but they were too fast for us today.

Obviously you’ve converted so many… what, the last eight pole positions into wins. You just missed out today. Does that mean you’ve got to kick-start it again and start thinking about the strategy for the future?
LH: We’ll just get back together as a team and try to figure out where we were losing time today. My balance wasn’t great particularly, so there are definitely areas we can improve on and I’m sure we’ll be fighting for the next race, which I’m really excited about.

You talked with your engineers, we were a bit confused and you were a bit confused. You didn’t know whether you were going to have to stop again. What was that discussion or were you not supposed to hear that?
LH: I don’t think I was supposed to hear it. In general the team did a fantastic job. I’m really grateful for the car we have. The fans have been fantastic this weekend. Thank you so much guys.

You’re still in the lead of the drivers’ championship after this race but as Sebastian was alluding to there, clearly it was a frustrating day for you. With the way that the car was behaving, with the way that the tyres were behaving and obviously with different strategies at play, do you still believe that was a winnable race for you?
LH: Well, we have to give it to them, they did a fantastic job this weekend and big congratulations to Sebastian and Ferrari. We were not, and I was not, expecting them to be as quick as they were today. I think it’s great for the fans to see. I don’t really know whether, if I’d stayed out with him, whether that would have made much of a difference. They were probably just as good if not a little bit better perhaps on tyre deg. So I think it would have still been very, very close. But I think naturally after that first stop I had so much ground to catch up it was pretty much impossible.

Sebastian said earlier that he could see you were struggling in that first stint. I just wondered if you agreed with that and indeed if that was going on. And just to expand on that previous question, the impression I got was whether he was asking whether maybe you should have run a set of used softs or mediums in that last stint instead of...
LH: ...the hards. Sorry, I thought you were talking about another stop.

You questioned that on the radio as well, whether you could have been on mediums instead of... The first question was were you really struggling early on or just holding...?
LH: Yes, I was. I was, definitely. Just generally, all day today, I was struggling with the balance, very very uncomfortable with the car, a lot of understeer in the low which inevitably snaps into oversteer everywhere, so I couldn’t really look after my tyres and I was doing everything with my controls but it really wasn’t... I couldn’t really find a good balance. When I went to the option tyre, the car was good or better so I was able to be a little bit more consistent and then closed down the gap. I hadn’t been told but I thought we would be going onto that tyre again at the end but we went onto the other one which wasn’t good for me as I’d experienced before, but I did the best job I could with it. I think ultimately the team made the best choices we could today and we’ll try to analyse and improve for next time.