Lewis Hamilton said the Mercedes W13 has "mood swings" when trying to describe the car's unpredictable form.
At times this season, the Silver Arrows have been well off the pace and unable to trouble Red Bull and Ferrari. That was the case at the Belgian Grand Prix, which saw George Russell take fourth while Hamilton crashed out on the first lap.
But just a week later things are looking a lot brighter for the British pair. They were both there or thereabouts in qualifying for the Dutch Grand Prix, and could have produced better results than fourth and sixth had their final runs not been scuppered by the yellow flags brought out by a Sergio Perez spin.
Hamilton admitted that the team still cannot figure out why the W13 is so patchy. "Much happier coming into this weekend, to have a car that's potentially fighting but I just don't understand," the seven-time world champion said after qualifying.
"One weekend it can be so far off and the next weekend all of a sudden we're right there, so it's confusing for sure. There's hope that the potential is there but I have no idea whether the car is going to be good or bad at the next races.
"It's like a mood swing. Like the characteristics of a human being, you don't know what side of the bed you're going to get out of." He went on to add that his engineers are similarly baffled as to why the car looks so good at Zandvoort, after figuring out why it did work in Belgium.
He continued: "It has to do with aero curvatures and all sorts that I don't know why we didn't see it going into the last race because there were things we could have done differently and it could have been a little bit better at least.
"Not two seconds quicker but why are we missing that? So we're just looking at things of how we can make sure we're better prepared from race to race. But just generally, this type of track, just putting the car on it – just works much better with the right height and so we're just looking at things of how we can make sure we're better prepared from race to race."
Toto Wolff had suggested Hamilton's final flying lap was on course for pole had it not been disrupted by that Perez spin. The Brit is not so sure about that, but knew more was on the table. "I think they were still a bit too quick, but I think the front row was possible," he concluded.
