McLaren pit error hindered Hamilton's race

Hamilton had been pushing race leader Felipe Massa in the opening leg of the race, but the Briton lost almost 10 seconds in the second stint when he felt less confident with the balance of the car.

And with the speed returning after the second pitstop, when he was able to close the gap on Massa once again, McLaren think they simply made a mistake with tyre pressures and front wing adjustments at the pitstop.

"You make some tyre pressure adjustments and you make some aero adjustments," said McLaren F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh. 

"Sometimes you make the car better and Lewis in the second stint in Malaysia was very, very strong. But that was our weakest stint in this race.

"You have to make a judgement on the data in front of you. The track is evolving and we were not as strong in that phase as we wanted to be.

"We had fuelled Lewis a bit longer than the Ferrari, and clearly we hoped at that point that, with traffic willing and good pace in the second stint, we would have been able to have a stronger attack at Massa.

"That didn't work out, but in the end we were able to put a bit of pressure there. Sadly the race wasn't quite long enough to get the job done."

Despite McLaren maintaining their lead in the constructors' championship, and both their drivers tied with Kimi Raikkonen for the lead in the drivers' championship, McLaren boss Ron Dennis said he was not completely happy with their performance in Bahrain.

"We don't go away from here feeling that we have done a particularly good job," he said. "Certainly with Fernando I don't think we got the best out of the car.

"We were competitive. In the first part of the race we were setting fastest laps and probably, if we had led the race, we would perhaps have opened out a lead.

"In the middle stint I don't know where our balance went but we struggled and in the last stint we were quick again. We will understand it over the next two or three days.

"We don't go away feeling we have an uncompetitive car; we go away feeling we didn't do a particularly good job, especially with Fernando."