Lewis Hamilton has admitted he always expected the Azerbaijan Grand Prix to be ‘disastrous’ following his struggles in the race on Sunday.

The 39-year-old qualified seventh but was then forced to start from the pit lane after Mercedes decided to fit a new engine.

Hamilton, in the end, was forced to settle for ninth. He would have finished even lower had it not been for a crash involving Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez.

And the Stevenage-born racer has now admitted he always expected the day to be ‘disastrous’.

“I knew it was going to be a disastrous race as soon as this decision was made last night,” he said.

Hamilton was initially happy with his car but admitted that he felt hindered by some changes made to his vehicle.

“It was pretty good on Friday but I think the others have developed and we haven’t in this phase – but we have some stuff coming.”

While Hamilton toiled in Baku, George Russell was able to finish third.

The Mercedes star was the fastest driver in the second half of the race, with only Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri finishing higher.

Russell says he feels it was an ‘odd’ race.

He was also left bemused by the tyres put on his car.

Russell said: “It was a really odd race. The first 20 laps we were 1.5 seconds off the pace, the last 20 laps we were one second quicker than Piastri or Charles [Leclerc], 0.3 or 0.4s quicker than Carlos and Checo.

“These tyres… it’s the same car, same driver, same track. How you can have two extremes, I don’t know?

“P5 was a fair result. Probably should have been P6 if Lando started in his normal place.

“There was no patience involved. Charles pulled 17 seconds in 15 laps and I was doing everything I could to manage the tyres and get them under control.

“I was just dropping off a cliff, then on the hard tyres it felt like I had a race-winning car.

“At the beginning it felt like it was a P20 car.

“It’s a little bit infuriating for every driver that we are dealing with this week in, week out, but every driver says the same about the tyres.

“It’s been 14 years with these tyres and no one understands them.”

Mercedes chief Toto Wolff, meanwhile, admitted he’s hoping fortunes will improve when a new floor is implemented at the United States Grand Prix.

“We still suffered from the same balance problems we had with the new floor,” he said.

“With Singapore, we have the same one, so we have to race that. From Austin onwards, we will go to a new spec.”