Hamilton: Mercedes 'can't afford another weekend' like Monaco in F1 title battle

Hamilton endured a torrid weekend in the principality last time out, qualifying and finishing in seventh place. 

Difficulties in getting the tyres up to temperature left him well down the field in qualifying, while a poor strategy call by Mercedes meant Hamilton was unable to move up the order.

The seven-time champion dismissed questions that this year’s title battle with Verstappen is his toughest yet.

“Each one is different in its own way but I don’t think it’s worse or better,” Hamilton said after the race in Monaco. “It’s going to be tough. I told you at the beginning they’ve got a championship-winning car, and they’re going to be very hard to beat. 

“I’ve been serious about it all year, these races, and we’ve won races which we shouldn’t have won, like in Bahrain, but it’s not over. There’s a long long way to go, we can’t afford another weekend like this, but I’m grateful I finished and got some points, fastest lap, every point you get on a bad weekend like this can hopefully count towards something at the end.”

Despite surrendering the lead of both championships in Monaco, Hamilton reiterated the mantra: ‘we win and we lose as a team’.

“Well, yeah, we don’t like to kick each other when we’re down. I think… there’s no finger-pointing, so no one individual that takes the blame,” Hamilton added. “We win and we lose as a team. We have a very open and honest discussion and it’s not personal. It’s like ‘hey man this should have been better, this should have been better, why didn’t we do this’, we all take everything onboard. It’s constructive discussions, and if there’s any constructive criticism we take it onboard, then we huddle up, do the work, get on the call. 

“There won’t be silence between now and the next race, we’ll have meetings, just so we’re clear on what happened and where we went and what things we might want to… the reasons we have all the championships we have is we made plenty of mistakes but we always come back stronger. 

“And we learn from them. I’m often grateful for crappy days like this as it is days you learn the most. If you’re winning all the time you learn less. There’s a lot to take from this weekend, and we don’t have all the answers, but it will force us to have to go and search for them.”