MONZA, Italy -- Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes' starts are his main concern before Singapore after losing a shot at victory at the Italian Grand Prix due to a poor getaway off the line.
Hamilton's dominant weekend fell apart at lights out, with a slow start from pole position relegating him to seventh at the end of the first lap. Although he eventually battled back to finish second, the poor start cost him what had looked like a good shot at victory.
The reigning world champion struggled to explain what went wrong immediately after the race, suggesting it was "an inconsistent clutch", but was able to give a more accurate description in his evening media session, which came after his debrief.
"I'm told it wasn't a driver error, but it wasn't anyone's error," Hamilton said. "You've seen it with Nico in Hockenheim and it's bitten me quite a lot this year. I was told the procedure was just as I was supposed to do it but unfortunately we had an over-delivery of torque and the wheels were just spinning from the get-go."
Asked if further improvements need to be made, Hamilton said: "Of course, we never stop improving and learning. Today we would have learnt again but this year has been a harder year for us with the clutch. It's not a quick fix, not something we can change for the next race. We have made improvements and have made more consistent starts but we are still caught out by the random variation that we have from one weekend to another.
"We do practice starts all weekend and they are varying a little bit and then, every now and then, we get a random variation on the grid. You've seen it with Nico and you've seen it with me, quite a few times, so we will continue to work on it. I assure you that on Tuesday that's all we will be talking about because everything else we are doing really well. I will be trying to give as much information to help the last seven races. We are not struggling with pole positions, it's just getting off the line."
In his own media session, team boss Toto Wolff disagreed that driver error played no part in the start but refused to single out anyone for blame.
"The reason we changed the rules last year was to give more responsbility to the driver and make it more variable. But its just what happens, you have good starts and bad starts, and I think our system has improved a lot. But obviously today machine and driver got it wrong.
"What we can see is that it is a procedural thing so I don't want to blame anybody. Neither Lewis, nor the engineers, nor the systems. I think we have to properly address that topic because it cost him a race and I think we all need to stick the heads together to avoid that for him and the team."
When it was put to Wolff that surely someone must have been to blame as something went wrong during the procedure, he replied: "No, completely wrong. We are never blaming anybody. This team, I would never believe anyone is to blame, not the driver, not the engineer, nobody.
"When you start to blame this is when it goes downhill because people will try to protect their arse and make sure they have a conservative system in place rather than putting the best development on the car. So nobody is to blame. In this particular case I think it's a combination of many things, partly because we changed rules last year and why I don't want to go there."