Lewis Hamilton despairs at Mercedes problem that has 'never in my life' been worse

Lewis Hamilton said he had "never" experienced so much understeer in a Formula 1 car as he toiled away without much reward in the early stages of the Chinese Grand Prix.

Hamilton hasn't finished a Grand Prix any higher than seventh so far this season with Mercedes still a long way off the pace. There was plenty of optimism about the W15 before the season, but it has proven to be another temperamental nightmare of a car.

The seven-time F1 champion has spent most of his time across the first five race weekends of the year experimenting with setups. And the Shanghai race was no different - even though it was the first Sprint weekend of 2024.

He performed very well by qualifying second for the short-form race and finishing there too. But more setup changes made the car worse and a mistake in qualifying stranded him down in 18th on the grid.

Parc ferme rules meant he couldn't make any further significance to the car and so had to make the best of it. He managed to battle through to finish ninth, but even that didn't look likely in the early stages as he struggled to make progress.

And Hamilton told reporters he thought he had damage, because of how the car felt when he was trying to negotiate corners. He said: "I thought maybe at the beginning I tapped someone because I have never had so much understeer in my life, so I was turning in at slow speed and waiting, waiting, waiting.

"So, I thought I had damaged something like some of the others because there was debris going everywhere at one point, but it was just the set-up that I chose. With better decisions on set-up, we would be around where George [Russell] is, but we just have to keep fighting."

Russell finished the Shanghai race in sixth and has yet to be beaten by Hamilton in a Grand Prix this season. And he felt he had extracted the best result possible from the Grand Prix.

He said: "Starting P8 and moving forward a couple of positions, that's sort of where we were hoping and expecting to finish considering the performance we've been showing. I think the result is probably a fair one.

"What we've seen, we know we have work to do. It was good to have the Sprint format this weekend - we had two very different setups on the car, Friday and Saturday morning versus Saturday afternoon and today. [There's] lots to pick through and build from."