Lewis Hamilton says his car lacked performance for the entire Bahrain Grand Prix after he collided with Valtteri Bottas at Turn 1.
For the second race in a row Hamilton had a slow getaway from pole position and, after dropping behind Nico Rosberg, was hit on the sidepod by the Williams of Bottas on the inside of Turn 1. Despite visible damage to the right side of his car Hamilton recovered to finish third but he says his Mercedes W06 was never the same after the contact.
"I lost a lot of performance from the car," Hamilton said. "Not sure exactly what happened but whoever was on the inside was on my blind spot so I didn't see them, it was a racing incident -- these things happen. I tried to manage the tyres and obviously had a lot less right rear end and tried to do the best I could do with it."
Bottas earned a drive-through penalty and two penalty points on his superlicence for the incident.
Hamilton's chances of challenging Raikkonen for second seemed to disappear in the latter part of the race when Mercedes delayed his final stop when he was starting to struggle on the super-soft tyre but the three-time world champions says the team was waiting to see what unfolded elsewhere.
"The team was hoping that there was potentially going to be a safety car or something. I had so much damage on the car that I couldn't keep up with Kimi. I was fighting but the rear end was nowhere. I did what I could with it and at the end I was just trying to keep the tyres just in case I got an opportunity with a safety car, but it didn't come."
Asked if the two poor starts are related, Hamilton replied: "I think two separate incidents but both equally painful, perhaps this one today is more painful but nonetheless we still managed to get back up there and at least get some points, so again damage limitation. Congratulations to Nico, kind of an easy race for him I would assume, but obviously I'm glad it was more points when I could have not finished the race."