Where does Hamilton go from here?

This is not a 'knock Lewis Hamilton' column, it is based on the facts as I see them.

What a difference a week makes. The Mercedes conspiracy theory is a thing of the past, with Hamilton's major problem (on track) at Suzuka being that he dropped from second to eighth even before the first corner.

Now that could have been seen either way: perhaps Mercedes really was out to screw him from the off this time and somehow interfered with his start, or maybe he threw it all away on his own. I'm pretty sure it was the latter, as Hamilton even felt he had to apologise to the team while trying to recover from what was probably the worst start of the season.

He worked his way back to third with a really good drive, and on the podium he felt it necessary to grovel a bit to everyone at Mercedes and try to recover from some of the statements he made after the Malaysian Grand Prix the previous weekend.

But Formula 1 teams are not stupid, and this sort of grovelling does nothing to help the recovery from some very ill-advised statements that were made while Hamilton's adrenaline was still pumping at Sepang. These things normally come back and bite you, and Suzuka just showed that.

On the other side of the garage Nico Rosberg had a great weekend. He dominated every session, sat on pole position, made a perfect start and went on to win the race in what could be called a very controlled manner.

He didn't over-stress anything and just kept a gap to whoever was running second to allow him enough margin to recover from being held up when lapping a backmarker. It was a truly professional job and the drive of a future world champion - someone that some inside Mercedes will be looking at as 'a real team player'.

So how does Hamilton recover from here? That's a difficult question. Mercedes will still be 100% behind him, but he needs to pump in a few mega results to lift his image within the team.

As far as the starts are concerned he has probably been the driver to lose more positions off the grid this year than anyone else. This needs looking at closely - as I'm sure Mercedes is doing right now - because it just negates any qualifying domination that Hamilton might have.

Mercedes has even altered the drivers' gloves to give them a more sensitive feel of the clutch paddle. Feel is everything, but it is a little bit further into the system than the tips of your fingers - it's the relationship between clutch paddle position and the clutch bite driving through to the rear wheels.

The clutch preparation is vitally important. It's from this that the heat in the clutch is generated and this is what gives it the coefficient of friction, or in layman's terms the ability for the clutch to transmit the amount of torque the power unit can produce at the intended start revs.

To me it looked like the engine bogged down at Suzuka. Hamilton talked of getting too much wheelspin, but I think the revs dipped to almost a stall and he had to disengage the clutch again to get the system out of anti-stall.

As a driver, recovery from start problems is something that's very difficult to do. You can practice at the end of the pitlane until you're blue in the face, but on the way to the grid and on the grid itself things are very different.

The pressure on the driver increases and that can be when the startline gremlins start to creep in. Hamilton just needs a couple of good starts and it will all be a thing of the past, but with only four races left I'm not sure it will happen this year. So expect starts to remain a bit of a lottery that could even get worse before they get better.

While Hamilton bounced back from that poor start and, as I said earlier, drove really well in the race, his off-track behaviour caused a stir in the paddock and I wasn't very impressed with that.

F1 is a major worldwide sporting contest and because of this the media writes a lot of column inches. When Hamilton was playing with his mobile phone in the FIA press conference on Thursday it was disrespectful to Formula 1, the FIA, FOM and the media.

All of these people put a lot of effort into these sessions. They might be boring, but that's what Hamilton gets paid for. The driving over the weekend is the fun bit.

His statement later in the weekend that he would not give the media any more of his time just shows how little he understands the system. Boycotting press sessions can only hurt his image as the media will still write what they think, but he will not have the chance to steer the direction of the coverage about him.

As far as the championship is concerned Hamilton will need help from Red Bull and Ferrari. For the rest of this season both of these teams and all four of their drivers are only out to win races, so if Hamilton can win he needs them to be between him and Rosberg.

Red Bull could help the Hamilton situation, but I wouldn't put too much money on Ferrari helping anyone. Come Sunday afternoons it doesn't seem to be able to help itself, never mind anyone else.

The team continues to trip over itself. It has more potential than the end results show and as a team it needs to look closely at why and how it keeps throwing it away when it counts.

As for the others, McLaren was the disappointment of the weekend and a huge disappointment for Honda at its home race.

To spend the race dicing with a Sauber and a Toro Rosso in what McLaren has called the third best chassis is not what anyone would expect from a weekend where Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso struggled from the moment they hit the track on Friday.

I have been to Suzuka with cars powered by Honda engines and I know the credence the company puts into getting a good result at its home track.

What happened this weekend at Suzuka will ricochet through the Honda boardroom, and let's not forget it is not so long ago that it joined Toyota in running off with their tails between their legs back to Japan.

I'm sure this week questions will be asked along the lines of 'are we doing the right thing with the right team?'.

Suzuka is a track that really showcases a well-balanced chassis. It needs a bit of everything: downforce, efficiency, braking stability, long-corner balance, change of direction, low-speed mechanical grip and traction. If any of this is missing then the lap time just disappears, and looking at the McLaren it was missing more than one of these factors.

Before signing off the 2017 car McLaren has a lot of work to do to understand why it was so far off the pace at Suzuka, otherwise it will just carry the same problems into the new season with new regulations that place more of a premium on aerodynamic performance.

Before I sign off this week, could someone please have word with the powers that be and see if they can influence the drivers in the cool-down room before they head out onto the podium? They are about as emotional as a hedgehog that's just been run over by a truck.

Lighten up chaps, it's only a sport that you get handsomely rewarded for participating in.