Next races crucial for Mercedes - Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton believes the coming races in Japan and the United States will be crucial to show if Mercedes can overcome the problems it faced in the Malaysia Grand Prix.

Starting from pole position, Hamilton struggled for outright pace compared to Red Bull and Ferrari and was beaten to victory by Max Verstappen at Sepang. The result could have been worse, as Kimi Raikkonen failed to start the race having qualified a close second, while Sebastian Vettel had power unit problems in qualifying and climbed from last on the grid to fourth place.

With Mercedes the third-quickest car on race pace, Hamilton admits he is unsure if there will be a repeat next weekend at Suzuka.

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"A much better weekend than we anticipated after our Friday," Hamilton said. "Still, we've got a lot of work to do with our car. So considering the issues we did have with the car it is a good result. I think Valtteri [Bottas] obviously seemed to struggle a lot more and I was able to just pull a little bit more out of it I guess.

"These next races are going to be crucial in terms of finding out whether we can iron out some of the creases in the car. But who would have thought the Ferraris would have problems? All we can do is try to capitalize as much on those.

"Naturally, I wanted to win the race and so Max did a fantastic job today, but ultimately winning the race is still the goal, so even if you get second it is not that satisfying.

"We knew going into the race that [Ferrari] had eight tenths on us, so it's no surprise. Going toward the next races I have no idea how we will go. Yeah, the others have just generally picked up a bit more pace than us. Circuits like this, there are corners that really magnify the issues we have with the car, so that's something we struggle with here. Whether or not that will be the same in the next races we go to, we will wait and see."

Despite his concerns, Hamilton says he is pleased to extend his championship lead to 34 points and accepted early on he would struggle to hold off Verstappen, with the Dutch driver taking the lead on lap four (pictured).

"I didn't really know how close Max was and I was having some problem at the beginning of the race, struggling with battery power. I went to defend but didn't really want to risk it so I left enough room. I didn't completely close the door and be too aggressive.

"At the end of the day Max had more pace than me and it would have been a struggle anyway, even if he hadn't got past at that point. Perhaps it would have happened somewhere else so it was going to be a real struggle. I did everything I could after that just to maintain position and good to still get second."