After dominating the weekend coming into the Italian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton’s hopes of clinching a fourth victory at Monza effectively disappeared within seconds of the lights going out.

After an initially normal start, the polesitter was then very slow off the grid, leaving him swamped by other cars getting around him before he finally went through the first chicane in sixth place.

Hamilton initially appeared to take the blame for the poor getaway over the team radio, but afterwards said he wasn’t actually sure what had happened.

“I knew that my engineers would be worried and nervous about how the start went, so that’s why I tried to put their minds at ease. I don’t really know what happened at the start but obviously I’ll try and understand it later. I did everything normal.

“Obviously the start was the decider of the race, then after that just trying to get back into the points, back into second to try and reduce the loss from the start.”

Hamilton was able to pass Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo and Williams’ Valtteri Bottas during the first stint, and a one-stop strategy took care of the two Ferrari cars meaning that Hamilton was able to finish second albeit 15 seconds behind his Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg.

“Nico was just pulling away up in front in the clear, generally having an easy, breezy kind of role up there – that’s what it’s like when you’re in first, and the others behind slower cars. He did a great job and I just had to try and get up to second.

“It’s hard to overtake here, so live to fight another day,” he added.

Hamilton dismissed the threat from the Ferrari team at its home race, saying that they had never been a threat to the Mercedes cars.

“They’re obviously quicker in the race. That’s always been the case. Qualifying is a bigger gap and the race closes up a bit, but we were never under threat from them today.”