Hamilton: One against two isn’t easy

Lewis Hamilton has sent a thinly-veiled dig at team-mate Valtteri Bottas for his performance in the Australia Grand Prix, saying that "one against two isn't easy" in reference to his ongoing battle with Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari during the race.

In the opening Grand Prix of the season in Melbourne, Hamilton made the perfect start, heading to his seventh pole position, a new record. It looked in the initial stages of the race like it would be a routine win for the 2017 champion, but all that changed when Romain Grosjean retired at turn two which triggered the presence of the VSC.

Thanks to a strategic pit-stop, Vettel got back in contention and got ahead of Hamilton to stay there to claim the win. The German was aided by his team-mate, Raikkonen, who ended up finishing third, meaning that Hamilton was sandwiched between the two cars of the Prancing Horse.

Bottas of Mercedes, meanwhile, struggled to an eighth-place finish and was nearer the back of the grid than the front for the majority of the Grand Prix. Hamilton thinks the lack of support from his team-mate left him handicapped against the Ferrari duo.

"It's definitely not easy to fight against a team with two cars in the mix compared to one team with one," Hamilton told the official F1 site.

"The Ferraris were always going to play one off the other, there’s two of them. They’ve got two aces or whatever, two jacks or jokers.

"You pit one guy which forces you to protect yourself on the undercut, but the other guy’s in the clear.

"And in my mind I was like 'just like look out for number three' (on the road – Vettel), as that's who I think I was racing, but Kimi drove fantastically well – he was generally quick all weekend."

Hamilton was impressed with the race of Ferrari, and claimed on Monday that he expects them to be 'rapid' in the next Grand Prix in Bahrain.