Mercedes war with Ferrari not over

Whether or not Ferrari engineered the result of Monaco Grand Prix is irrelevant.

Whether they did favour Sebastian Vettel over Kimi Raikkonen or not doesn’t matter, if they did, it’s not illegal to do so, if they didn’t then Vettel deserved his victory.

But what does really matter, is the result. The 25 points over a race weekend that Hamilton was yet again struggling for set-up and grip due to the Pirelli tyres leaves Vettel a whole 25 points ahead of Hamilton in the 2017 Formula One World Championship.

Valterri Bottas is a further 29 points adrift and Kimi another 8 points behind that.

But after 6 races of a 20 race season there is still a long way to go.

‘The war is not over. It’s a marathon not a sprint,’ Hamilton told Sky Sports.

But if Mercedes are to challenge Ferrari consistently enough for Hamilton to play catch-up to Vettel, they are going to need some big improvements to the car.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff added: ‘I like the notion of underdog because the underdog is obviously the one people want to see win. As a matter of fact, I think we have been that since the beginning of the season. We have been dropping in and out of the tyre window. We never had two drivers or two cars over the whole course of a weekend within that window.

‘We have seen an exceptional performance of Valtteri in Sochi which we were not able to replicate on Lewis’ car, we have seen an exceptional performance of Lewis in Barcelona and that inconsistency has been following us through the season.

‘On the opposite side, Ferrari put the car on the track in Barcelona and were quick from the get go, so yes, we are the underdog, yes we need to catch up. This is the reality of it at the moment.