Hamilton confident Mercedes will rediscover pace

Lewis Hamilton is positive Mercedes will find fixes for the problems that limited its pace in the Malaysia Grand Prix, saying such struggles are "just not acceptable" for the team.

Despite qualifying on pole position, Hamilton was unable to match the race pace of Max Verstappen at Sepang and finished a distant second to the 20-year-old. The result could have been worse, as Ferrari also showed stronger pace than Mercedes but Sebastian Vettel had to start from the back of the grid after power unit problems in qualifying, and Kimi Raikkonen failed to start from second on the grid due to similar concerns.

Asked if he is happy to have scored strong points compared to championship rival Vettel – who recovered to fourth place ahead of Valtteri Bottas – or is worried about the car's performance, Hamilton replied: "Honestly I feel positive.

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"The debrief was one of the best debriefs I've had. Period. That's often the case because when you have a win there is a lot less to say and everyone is riding on positives and there is a lot less to say. When you have a difficult day and when the s**t really hits the fan, that's when you have more questions and there are more details you go into.

"[After Malaysia] my comments, Valtteri's comments were that it was a real hit for us to point at certain issues that are bad, because it's stuff that you don't even know about that has been happening through the weekend. That's just not acceptable at this great a team, and we all know that and need to work on those areas.

"My thought process is that I'm really happy with my performance, personally my performance and how I executed the race I feel really happy with it. Naturally I question myself over whether I should have closed the door, but I think the long-game approach I took is the right one. While initially it doesn't feel like the best thing, I think it was the best decision because there was no need for me to battle with Verstappen, who was much quicker, and risk colliding with him.

"Generally, coming away from it I'm happy with my qualifying and happy with what I was able to get out the car, but also happy with the analysis we had and that the team is now really pumped up to analyze and see what we can rectify with the current package we have and also what we are going to do with next year."

And Hamilton said he was not expecting to extend his championship lead by a large margin despite starting from pole position, having seen how quick Vettel would be in the race.

"I didn't approach the race thinking 'he's last, I'm going to get a free race'," he said. "They showed me on the simulations that he was going to finish fifth or fourth, so we already knew that and it wasn't a surprise to see where he was. We also knew from his long run pace that he had around 0.8s to 1.0s, which is rare. Most races it's 0.1s or 0.2s faster for race pace, but 0.8s up we knew was going to happen.

"Obviously Kimi going out was a big advantage for the Red Bulls and for us because they would have had more pace and I would have been maybe third. But that's the best I could really do. Even if I had closed the door and held Verstappen back on that one lap then he would have got me because they had over 0.5s in pace and some laps it was 0.8s.

"When he passed me he was pulling away at 0.8s per lap and there was nothing I could do about it. That's really down to some issues we have with the car that they don't fully understand."