Hamilton: Improving starts a priority for Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton says delivering better starts is now one of Mercedes’ top priorities after he and team-mate Nico Rosberg were comfortably beaten off the line by the Ferraris at the Australian Grand Prix.

Lining up on pole, the Briton saw Sebastian Vettel rocket past him to lead into the first corner, while Kimi Raikkonen also overtook both Silver Arrows following his better launch.

It was not the first time that Ferrari enjoyed stronger getaways than their title rivals, with Hungary last year springing to mind. After a first series of restrictions implemented from the 2015 Belgian Grand Prix, the FIA has further tweaked the procedure in an effort to put race starts more in control of the drivers.

Asked if he had experienced any problem with his clutch, Hamilton replied: “No, I just got wheel spin. No particular real issues, Ferrari’s are very, very strong.”

“My initial phase was just the same as Nico’s but the second part where you release the clutch fully I just had extra wheel spin and didn’t recover from it so it wasn’t a major issue.

“It’s always an ongoing change, even when my starts have been amazing. It’s always moving, targets are always shifting so it is something for sure… We were just talking now and it’s one of our priorities. The Ferrari’s got an incredibly good start, so we’re going to try and figure out how we can do better.”

Also quizzed on his drivers’ sluggish starts, Mercedes motorsport Toto Wolff admitted he was in the dark as to why the two W07 bogged down when the lights went out.

“Our practice starts weren’t very good. To be honest I don’t know what happened at the start, we need to analyse what it could have been and we are looking to fix it.

“[Lewis’ start] was a couple of metres worse than Nico’s from what we measured and I’m not quite sure whether it was a hardware or software problem or just reaction. We will have to look.”

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Technical analysis - Melbourne

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