After doing well in the morning sprint on Saturday, Hamilton had to start the race from 18th place on the grid.
At first, even though Hamilton was using soft tires, he couldn’t move up much. He only got to 15th place before switching to the medium tires.
He said his car didn’t steer well in the first part of the race. He thought maybe he hit someone at the start because he never had so much trouble steering before.
“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,” Hamilton said.
He also mentioned that he tried starting the race on soft tires, but they didn’t last long. He had a hard time with them.
During the race, Hamilton passed a few more cars, and he ended up in ninth place after Lance Stroll and Daniel Ricciardo had an accident.
But Hamilton hopes that Mercedes will be better in the next race in Miami after some upgrades.
“It definitely wasn’t better than expected. We expected to be somewhere around there,” he said.
Russell, who finished sixth, said that was the best they could do considering they couldn’t keep up with the Ferraris.
“This weekend, we know where we’re falling out,” Russell said. “P6 is where we are right now.”
He also mentioned they tried different setups on the car during the weekend, and they needed to look at the data to make the car faster.
