Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has revealed Lewis Hamilton was losing a second a lap at the Bahrain Grand Prix after being hit at Turn 1.
After a bad start, Hamilton was knocked sideways by Valtteri Bottas at the first corner, suffering damage to his right sidepod and front wing. Despite dropping back through the field and the lack of performance Hamilton was able to turn in a recovery drive to third.
Explaining why Mercedes delayed Hamilton's final pit stop in the latter stages of the race, Wolff said: "The interesting thing in the race was that the medium didn't work at all, so we didn't expect that. Because the car was almost a second down on downforce, we soon found out that we had a lack of pace, there was no way of closing the gap to Kimi on the same tyre so keeping him out there would have given us a chance in case of a safety car -- that would have been the only chance of making second so this is what we tried."
For the second race in a row Hamilton's pole position was undone with a slow getaway off the line, being beaten in the long run to Turn 1 by teammate Nico Rosberg. However, Wolff thinks that has come down to bad luck more than Hamilton struggling with a particular issue.
"I think it is random. When you look at Nico's start into the formation lap, by mistake he chose second gear and went into anti-stall, so all that is possible and all that was the purpose of changing the [start] regulations."
While Ferrari bolted off the line in Australia, Mercedes' race was made easier by the fact Sebastian Vettel's engine failed on the formation lap and Kimi Raikkonen had a slow getaway of his own. Wolff does not think it is unusual to see starts differing from race to race.
"You will see good starts and bad starts and today the Ferraris, which really came off the line well last weekend, didn't go well at all today, with Kimi. We need to analyse what happened to the two of them [Mercedes] - I don't think the starts were particularly bad, it was a bit of a reaction time issue, but again I don't know."