How Hamilton is facing up to Mercedes' harsh new reality

Having qualified only 13th after struggling to get temperature into his Pirellis, it was logical to expect to see the seven-time F1 world champion make some progress, and at least get himself into the top 10 for the start of the main race on Sunday.

In fact he lost a couple of places at the start, and at the end of 21 laps had only managed to recover to 14th. His team-mate George Russell fared little better, starting and finishing 11th.

The dire sprint event was a real wake-up call for the team. After qualifying Mercedes engineering chief Andrew Shovlin had acknowledged the lack of pace over one lap on the cold and damp track, but he remained confident that the W13 is the third-fastest race car at the moment.

Hamilton and Russell certainly didn’t have the chance to show that in the sprint, and if there was any inherent advantage over some of those ahead, it wasn’t sufficient to allow the drivers to do much with it on a track with just one DRS zone.

"So painful,” said Hamilton when asked by Autosport how shocking the lack of progress was.

“It's difficult, there's no words for it, really. I don't know what the sims said, I think we were hopeful that we could get into the top 10 if we weren't stuck in the train. I think we have the pace to have been in the top 10. But unfortunately, that just wasn't possible today with DRS and the speed we had.

"Of course, the goal is to move as far forward as possible. But it's a challenge with the car. We're not particularly quick on the straights. And the bouncing that we have doesn't necessarily help.

“I think the delta that you're supposed to have to the car ahead is something like nine-tenths at this track, to have a 50% chance of overtaking. And so I don't think we have nine-tenths