Hamilton in ‘no doubt’ he could have won in Russia

Lewis Hamilton strongly believes he could have gone on to win the Russian Grand Prix if it hadn’t been for yet more technical problems.

Hamilton started the race from tenth on the grid after a technical problem had prevented him from participating in the final session of qualifying on Saturday.

Mercedes worked around the clock to give the triple world champion just half a chance of a recovery drive, firstly by flying out new parts from the UK to Russia and then his side of the garage worked flat out from 2am through to shortly before the race to get his 44 Mercedes ready.

I’d like to thank the guys who flew over from the factory last night, and my mechanics who worked from 2am to get my car ready, because without them I wouldn’t even have got to this point. Hamilton told formula1.com after the race.

Having started in tenth, Hamilton worked his way through to fifth after the opening three corners of the first lap and following the safety car he got past the Williams duo of Felipe Massa and Valterri Bottas as well as the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen.

He then began to hunt down team-mate Nico Rosberg cutting the deficit down to just 7 seconds before his team told him he had a water pressure problem.

‘There wasn’t a doubt in my mind I could win it, I had the pace but I had a problem with the engine again, so I had to back off.’ Hamilton again told formula1.com.

He added: ‘At that time I was lapping a little bit quicker than Nico so I was chewing away… there was quite a big gap but it did come down from 13s to 7.5s or something like that. At that point it was when I had to back off and drive a second slower through the laps, just to try and hope that the car was going to make it.

Hamilton concluded: ‘We just need to do a better job. It seems to be my side of the garage having a hard time, but I have absolutely every confidence and faith in them.

‘We need to work hard in the background. We did 800km a day in testing and the car was seen as bulletproof…’

Finishing second to Rosberg leaves Hamilton 43 points behind his Mercedes team-mate in the 2016 driver standings.