Lewis Hamilton at a loss to explain Mercedes' woes after a nightmare Spanish GP

Lewis Hamilton is at a loss to explain why Mercedes fell so far off the pace during the Spanish GP.

Although Mercedes have been expected to struggle in race trim due to the excessive tyre wear generated by the aggressive W04, nobody could have foreseen the grim travails awaiting Hamilton and team-mate Nico Rosberg on Sunday afternoon at the Circuit de Catalunya.

While the pole-sitting German at least had the modest consolation of holding off Paul di Resta's Force India for sixth place, Hamilton endured the torrid ignominy of being lapped as he went into sharp reverse through the field to end the race outside of the points.

"It was an experience I don't want to go through again," a gloomy Hamilton admitted. "I don't know why it happened. I did absolutely everything I did in Bahrain but the tyres just didn't come in and give me any grip. If I pushed, they went off immediately.

"I'm absolutely lost, I don't know what went wrong."

How Mercedes fans will shudder at that admission given that the W04's tyre-wear problems are so long established and the team spent all of Friday's practice sessions honing their race set-up before surprising themselves by locking out the front row on Saturday afternoon. What followed was a wretched ninety minutes as both cars were swept aside by the frontrunners long before Hamilton suffered the ultimate humiliation of being lapped by race victor Fernando Alonso.

"It seems like others have made a bigger step forwards than we did," the 2008 World Champion conceded. "If anything, it seems like we didn't make a step forward even though we brought upgrades because we didn't fix the problems of degradation."