Lewis Hamilton thinks aero problems with new Mercedes upgrades brought to the United States Grand Prix could be to blame for his early race exit.
The seven-time world champion capped a difficult Austin event by becoming the first and only race retirement, after spinning into the gravel trap at Turn 19 on lap three.
With team-mate George Russell having suffered a similar spin in qualifying, and Hamilton himself having had another mystery off in practice, he suspects that bouncing triggered by a new W15 upgrade may be the root cause of all the team's problems.
Reflecting on his spin in the race, Hamilton told Autosport: “I had a great start, was feeling good and got up to 12th. It was the best start that I’ve had at turn one in a long time.
“I wasn’t even pushing at that point; I was literally just trying to get going and bringing the tyres up to temperature.
“The car started bouncing, the left front started bouncing and the rear end just came round. It was the same as George yesterday.”
Reflecting on the coincidence of him and Russell suffering near-identical incidents, Hamilton reckoned that the team needed to look at the impact of the new package it brought here.
“In P1 I had the same thing,” he said. “I had the spin in Turn 3, which is so rare. I have never spun in Turn 3 in all the years I’ve been here.
“I was just saying about George obviously having the same problem yesterday, he has gone back to the old-spec car and is looking good out there, so maybe there is something with the new upgrade.”
Asked if the problems opened up the prospect of Mercedes reverting to its old specification for next weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix, Hamilton said: “We will investigate as much as we can, and after today we will get the data and see if we are going to be on the old or the new spec next week.”
Hamilton endured a rollercoaster of a weekend in Austin, where once again the fluctuating form of the Mercedes car left drivers and team confused.
Having looked on course for pole position in the sprint race on Friday before a yellow flag derailed his efforts, his hopes of a good recovery in the Saturday event were wrecked by a suspension problem early on.
Later in the day he suffered a nightmare in the main qualifying session as he failed to make it out of Q1 and ended up 19th fastest.
After starting 17th on the grid, thanks to team-mate George Russell starting from the pitlane and Liam Lawson’s grid penalty, he made a brilliant start to end the opening lap in 12th place before his spin.
Hamilton reckoned that with the way the car was behaving, the likelihood is that he was always going to end the race with some incident.
“If I didn’t have the bouncing stuff on that lap I think it would have happened on a later lap coming up, because something wasn’t quite right there with the car,” he said.
“It has been the same most of the weekend with this new package we have, so it was obviously devastating. But it is what it is.”
