Hamilton, who took a promising second place in Saturday morning’s sprint, entered the race to recover from 18th on the grid.
However, the seven-time world champion did not make much progress on the soft tires at first, climbing up to 15th place before moving to the medium compound.
He said his car understeered so badly during the first half of the race that he thought something might have broken down.
“I had never understeered so much in my life, so at first I thought maybe I had hit someone. So I turned in at low speed and just waited, waited, waited. ‘ explained Hamilton.
“So at one point there was debris flying all over the place and I thought maybe I had damaged something like the other things, but it was just the setup I chose.
“If we could make better decisions with our set-up, we’d probably be where George is.” [Russell, who finished sixth] But we must keep fighting. ”
He said of his brief attempt at a soft start, which paid off. “Lo and behold, I think I was the only one who started on the soft, but after one lap it collapsed. It was very difficult.”
Hamilton passed several more midfielders and benefited from a collision between Lance Stroll and Daniel Ricciardo to claim ninth place. But he hopes the upgrades planned for Miami will give Mercedes a much-needed boost in its battle with Ferrari and McLaren.
“It was definitely not as good as we expected. We expected to get somewhere around that,” he added. sky sports f1.
“Hopefully we can make some progress in the next race. Until then, we’ll go back to the factory next week and try to get the car in a better position for Miami and hope for a better weekend.” There’s
Russell said sixth place was an expected result, although he struggled to catch up with the two Ferraris.
“We know where we’re going to fall out this weekend,” he said. Sky. “The last three races have been like a battle with Fernando, [Oscar] Piastri too. This is where P6 is now.
“It was an interesting weekend as we were able to put two different setups on the car from Friday to Sunday, so we have to look at some information, but ultimately we need to dig into the data and see how well the car performed. Just keep improving.”
