Hamilton Monaco problems show 2017 Mercedes is a diva - Toto Wolff

While Valtteri Bottas qualified third on the grid in Monte Carlo, Hamilton failed to make it out of Q2 as problems getting his tyres into the right operating window proved costly, and he will start 13th

"You can say there is certain DNA in a car, and I think we have proved our car can go very quick in qualifying and in the race," explained the Mercedes motorsport boss.

"But it seems to be more a bit of a diva to get it into the right window.

"You can see it's probably marginal differences that make it drop out of the window, and we just need to get on top of this.

"We have a great team, that has shown in the past their strength in analysing data and finding out how to put it on the track on Friday, and then develop it over the weekend.

"This is one of the outliers that we've had in the past.

"We've had it in Singapore for different reasons, but this is another one.

"It's the second weekend that comes into my mind after three years or four years where we've struggled really badly from the get go, from FP2, with set-up."

Mercedes' Monaco difficulties come on the back of similar struggles at the Russian Grand Prix, and are a reminder of the difficult time the team faced at the 2015 Singapore Grand Prix.

But Wolff thinks it wrong to link all three events, as he suggests what happened in Singapore was something totally different.

"It's very tricky to get the tyres into the window and make the front axle work and at the same time make the rear axle work," he said.

"And you can see that, on [Hamilton's] lap, the car drops in and drops out [of the right tyre temperatures], unfortunately mostly out of it.

"Singapore was a totally different issue which we understood afterwards, and we came out on top.

"Here we seem to understand what's happening, but how we went backwards during the weekend is not yet understood."