Lewis Hamilton said he lost the Italian Grand Prix at the start after suffering excessive wheelspin and dropping down the order to sixth by the first corner.
Hamilton took pole position by half a second on Saturday, but a poor start opened the door for teammate Nico Rosberg to take the lead at the first corner and cruise to victory. Hamilton appeared to tell the team it was his mistake over the radio, but later clarified his comments in the press conference after the race.
"Obviously the race was lost at the start," he said. "I knew that my engineers would be worried and nervous about how the start went so that is why I had to put their mind at ease [on the radio].
"I don't really know what happened at the start but I will try to understand later, I did everything as normal. It is hard to overtake here but we live to fight another day.
"It is a great audience here like every year it is just incredible. A lot of Ferrari fans but also a lot of British flags here today so I appreciate them coming out."
When the Mercedes drivers were asked why it was so difficult to get a good start under new clutch rules this year, Rosberg said: "It is a rule change which makes it more challenging as it is down to the driver now to do it. It is just more difficult."
But Hamilton disagreed ...
"I don't agree that it is more down to the driver I think it is the same as it was before we just have a relatively inconsistent clutch and it is hard. In the past we were able to be told our clutch temperature and it would be easier to hit a target but now it is a lot less easy to know what your clutch is going to be delivering and what it is not."
After the poor start, Hamilton said he could feel the race slipping away.
"I think in the moment you are just thinking about getting back to where you started. My goal was trying to get back up to where I was but of course I could see Nico pulling away and in my experiences of being here in F1 while anything can happen the chances of a win were decreasing lap by lap, second by second.
"So of course I knew at quite an early stage that winning the race was not going to be possible but I tried. I got up to second and that was the best I could do with such a loss at the start."