Lewis Hamilton stated he had never driven with a “worse car balance” after a testing 51 laps in Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

The seven-time F1 world champion qualified in seventh but started from the pit-lane in Baku after taking a new power unit, exceeding his allocation for the season, and making setup changes after qualifying.

As a result, the Mercedes driver was forced to launch a charge through the field and, after Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez’s late crash, snuck into the top-10 and finished ninth.

Yet Hamilton was far from satisfied – at one point asking engineer Peter Bonnington “are you seeing how I have to drive this thing?” – and gave more glaring detail about the W15 car in the media pen post-race.

“It was the worst balance I probably ever had, one of the worst balances,” Hamilton said.

“Basically I had so much front-end and no rear. [To turn] I had to yank the steering wheel to break the traction from the front, slide the front through every corner.

“It was the weirdest way to drive.”

Hamilton only has seven races left for Mercedes and is currently sixth in the championship standings, 18 points behind Sainz in fifth.

“We had a great car on Friday and made the tiniest changes into Saturday,” he added. “One of the components wasn’t correctly built. That led us the wrong way then on Saturday. We didn’t find out until the end of the day.

“Being this race was the best race they said at least to make the change for the engine because we need one engine as I lost one earlier. We knew it was going to be a tough day.”

Hamilton’s teammate George Russell finished on the podium in third, capitalising on Sainz and Perez’s collision, as Oscar Piastri claimed a famous win in Baku ahead of Charles Leclerc.

F1 heads to Singapore this weekend for round 18 of the 2024 season.