It was a chaotic begin to the season at Albert Park for a race that began moist, dried up and ended moist once more, and featured three security automobiles, an aborted begin and a sequence of crashes.
Hamilton, who had certified eighth, mentioned: “I am grateful I bought by it, got here out of it with just a little little bit of one thing, a minimum of one level.
“Clearly I did not go off or spin. Missing tempo, for certain, however I do imagine the automotive has extra efficiency than we have been in a position to extract this weekend.”
He mentioned that the workforce left it too late to cease for treaded tyres when the rain got here with 13 laps to go – he stopped three laps after Norris and one after Verstappen.
Hamilton mentioned: “The final sector (of the lap), everybody was going off however I used to be managing to carry on, so I used to be simply passing folks, and as soon as we bought to the beginning line, it was dry.
“So I used to be like: ‘That is wonderful for me, I’ve simply bought to carry this out, I’ve solely bought a couple of laps to go.’
“However then it pelted down simply within the final two laps or one thing, it was coming down, and that is the second we in all probability ought to have are available in.
“In that second, I used to be like, ‘oh my God, I am third’. I used to be main for a second. However I imply, yeah, I do not know if we’ve got wherever close to the tempo because the McLarens had in the present day. However I do assume within the precise automotive, there’s much more efficiency, I simply do not assume we unlocked it this week.”
