"I'm doing everything I can to do my job the way I'm supposed to," says Lewis; Hamilton keen to know how same fault can strike twice
Thursday 19 May 2016 11:44, UK
Lewis Hamilton admits he feels "helpless" about his run of misfortune after his title defence suffered another setback in Russian GP qualifying.
The world champion was ruled out of the battle for pole for the second successive race on Saturday by a repeat failure in his Mercedes power unit - despite a new energy-recovery MGU-H being fitted after the problem first struck two weeks ago in Shanghai.
Hamilton will provisionally start 10th on Sunday's grid and seems almost certain to lose more ground to Nico Rosberg, who starts from pole and already leads the championship by 36 points.
The Briton has experienced problems at all four grands prix so far, from poor starts to first-corner collisions, and said several hours after the end of qualifying: "It's not easy, but there's nothing you can do about it.
"I'm doing everything I can to do my job the way I'm supposed to do it. I'm doing it to the best of my abilities, but these things are just unfortunate."
Asked to describe how he was feeling, Hamilton replied: "It's [as if] you're almost helpless at some points.
"We've worked so hard with my engineers and mechanics to get the car in a great position this weekend. We had the great pace once again and then this happens for us all unexpectedly and I feel helpless for my guys, because there is not much I can do to uplift them, and there's not much they can do to uplift me because it's happened.
"The goal is moving further and further away in the distance. I'm doing everything I can do, so there is nothing else I can do."
Hamilton said he was keen to understand how Mercedes could suddenly be affected by the same reliability problem at successive races, despite believing it would prove a one-off in China.
"I'm very, very curious about what is going on," he said. "So, of course, I've asked them to give me as much detail as possible because we did 8,000km a day in testing - the car was faultless - but all of a sudden two times in a row the same thing. That doesn't happen for us.
"They said we understood what happened in the first race and therefore I would have thought that we learned from that. But obviously not, and more work needs to go in."
Although Mercedes have not yet confirmed the MGU-H will again be replaced ahead of Sunday's race, Hamilton is already braced for another change and being pushed closer to the penalty-free limit for that element of the power unit.
"Now we've got another engine going in, who's to know it's not going to happen on that one," he added.
"So what's really key is we understand what it is, more so than we did before, and try to be careful on how we pick out all the engines we have for the rest of the year because I now only have three for the rest of the year, really."
On an already disappointing day, Hamilton was also issued with a reprimand by stewards for not following the set procedure for returning the track after running wide at Turn Two. He now has two reprimands for the season and is just one away from a 10-place grid penalty.
Starting 22nd and last in China, Hamilton still finished seventh despite being forced to pit for early repairs when Sauber's Felipe Nasr broke his front wing on the opening lap.
With a higher start beckoning for Sunday, the Briton is now at least aiming to avoid a fourth race in succession with first-corner contact.
"I'm just hoping to have a clean first lap and have a car in one place to be able to fight with people," he added. "I've not had one race this year where I've had the car in one piece after turn one, so that's what I'm hoping for."
