Hamilton: Mercedes 'must find pace' after latest loss

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Lewis Hamilton pulled out all the stops to take victory in the French Grand Prix, but ultimately wasn't able to fend off a penultimate lap attack from Max Verstappen.

Although he held on to second place, the latest setback means that Hamilton is now 12 points behind his Red Bull rival in the drivers standings, while Mercedes has fallen 37 points behind in the constructors championship.

Hamilton said he'd been able to do no more in today's race, and said that his team had to urgently find more straight line speed if it was going to stay in the title battle.

RACE REPORT: Verstappen wins tense back-and-forth French GP

“We’ve got to find some pace that's for sure,” Hamilton told the media after the end of Sunday's race at Circuit Paul Ricard at Le Castellet. "Most of the time we lost today was just on the straights.

"We've got to definitely dig deep and try and figure out why that is, and whether it's power or drag. But we’ve still got a good package."

Hamilton took the lead at the second corner after Verstappen braked too deep, but lost it again during the first round of pit stops when Red Bull achieved a huge undercut.

“I’m not really sure how we lost position today,” Hamilton said, adding that the team “didn’t know how strong” the advantage would be of stopping first.

With tyre degradation proving a big issue to all the teams, Red Bull then switched to a two-stop strategy while Mercedes tried to tough it out on a single stopper.

“What was really surprising too was the wear on the left front tyre so early on," Hamilton acknowledged. "But obviously they just had a good strategy and it worked really well.

“He was already quite far ahead so the only option I really had was to stay out," he continued. “Otherwise I would be pitting because he's again undercutting me, so he would just come out ahead.

"I wouldn’t be able to get past because they are too quick on the straights," he explained. "The only option was to stay out as long as possible and hope the tyres hold together.

“Of course we didn't win and we were in the lead," he said. "But I had no tyres left at the end, so I unfortunately lost the position. But still, it was a good race.

"I think considering that we had such a difficult Friday, I'm really happy with today's result," he concluded. “Congrats to Max he did a great job today. They just had better strength all weekend."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.