Hamilton explains reasons for Rosberg resurgence

Lewis Hamilton says Nico Rosberg's recent run of form is due to a changes made to the Mercedes since the Singapore Grand Prix.

While Hamilton was on pole position at 11 of the first 12 races this season, Rosberg has hit back towards the end of the year and will finish 2015 with six consecutive poles. While his team-mate claims he has simply been improving and getting the better of a close battle, Hamilton says a suspension change has unsettled him.

"There is part of the suspension which is worth just over a tenth of a half I think, something I didn’t think was working for me so I took it off," Hamilton said. "I have been using it for the last six races, but I tried to work around it and get back to where we were with it, but obviously we tried something different and it didn’t work so well.

"We know what has changed on the car. I am just trying to figure out why I can’t seem to get a comfortable balance with the car.

"If you look before Singapore it was in the region between three to six tenths gap between myself and Nico in qualifying, apart from Barcelona where there was a problem with the tyre heaters so without that we would have been in a good position to fight for pole there… since then a lot of time has been lost. Whilst it looks like one side has gone a lot better, from our point of view as a team it has gotten worse."

And Hamilton says he expects to still be competitive in today's race, but is eager to find a solution to his issues as the characteristics may be similar in 2016.

"What we have will go on to next year. Of course it is something I am thinking about. I was just sitting with my engineer and we need to think how to rectify this because I have this great graph which shows all the races, with up being slower and down being quicker. All 12, apart from Barcelona, the car was great.

"Since [Singapore] it has been terrible laps, terrible balance… particularly [on Saturday]. We need to figure out a way. There must be a way. Nico’s car looks like it is really well underneath him. It is not over now and in the race it is generally quite good, so we need to figure why it isn’t in qualifying."