Hamilton looks for positives after “horrifying” race in China

In the end, he was only able to salvage seventh place on a day when teammate Nico Rosberg scored his third win of the season.

Despite his obvious disappointment when he met the media less than an hour after the flag, Hamilton was already looking ahead and displaying the sort of upbeat approach that has been a hallmark this year – even if it was a little harder than usual to put on a brave face.

“How do you expect me to feel?” he asked. “Obviously the damage to the car had that domino effect, and pretty much like the last race we were trying to recover with the damage on the car.

"These things happen, and all you can do is try and focus on the future.

“Of course I don't sit here with an amazing feeling, but I have the utmost confidence in this team. I know that we will recover from this at some point. When? Who knows. I'm hoping for better races to come.”

Regarding the damage to the car and the incident that caused it, Hamilton said: “It felt similar to Bahrain. It doesn't look as bad.

"Basically I got a good start, obviously. I was taking it very cautious once I got into Turn 1. Kimi went off, a couple of the cars, I don't know whether they had touched, but I was trying to avoid them, and Kimi came on and, as I went to the inside, one of the cars that were trying to avoid Kimi turned into me.”

"Fun moments" amid troubled run

As he found himself in trouble for the second time in two races, the Brit tried to look for the positives.

“When you're driving, so much is going through your mind, so I don't really remember what happened much past the last stop," Hamilton recalled.

"I pitted, had to pass a load of people, pitted, had to pass a load of people. There was so much going on, I can't really remember. I'm sure it wasn't a good feeling.

"But you have to get over it straight away and try to look forward, and I'm sure that's what I was trying to do.

“It was a horrifying race, really! But there were some good experiences, obviously the overtaking. At one stage I went round the outside of someone through Turn 7 and the outside of someone at Turn 8.

"I love doing that stuff, catching people where they're not expecting it. And even with the damage on the car. So there were some fun moments today.”

"No more jokers available"

He was also asked to compare his current situation with the latter stages of the 2014 season, when at one point he had been 29 points behind Nico Rosberg.

“It doesn't feel any nicer than it did back then. If anything, it feels worse perhaps now, because obviously it's gone one negative after the other.

"But there's a long, long way to go, lots can happen. It's just that I have no more jokers available, really.

"My start was good today, I had a good start, finally! Trust it to happen when I'm dead last.

"That's something positive we can take into the next race and hopefully utilise and use to my advantage from now on.”

No "dark cloud" above

Lewis was adamant that these days he is coping better with adversity than he might have done in the past.

“I definitely I don't feel the dark cloud I've had in the past over me now. Of course it's a trying time, lots of different emotions and thoughts are going through my mind.

"As you see this season start the wrong way, you see a championship which your goals, your eyes are focussed on move further away from you as you're approaching it. But, this is a part of motor racing, and this is a part of the journey.

“Through these experiences, not only myself but my mechanics and engineers, it brings us closer, it makes us stronger.

"And as I was saying I had a good start, and I can still overtake, so there's lot of positives to take from today.

"Ultimately I wasn't able to show all my ability in terms of pure pace, because I had a damaged car. But that was the same in the last race as well. But we'll go away, we'll come back. We failed this weekend, we'll get up and try harder next time.”