It was a race to forget for Lewis Hamilton on Sunday at the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai.

Hamilton was heard berating Mercedes officials and the pit crew over the radio, in what was a frustrating day at the office for himself and his team.

Mercedes have gone three races without a win so far this season, with Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel winning the first two in Australia and Bahrain respectively, and Daniel Ricciardo winning on Sunday.

However, Hamilton's frustrations were mainly down to Mercedes not reacting fast enough to a safety car period, according to driver-turned BBC pundit Jolyon Palmer.

In his BBC column, Palmer said: “Hamilton was in fourth place, had little to lose, and if he had pitted he would have returned to the track ahead of eventual winner Ricciardo and on the same tyres and strategy. The victory would have been there for the taking.

“This is not the first time this year Hamilton has been let down by strategy as a result of the safety car.

“He lost a race win in Melbourne because of a miscalculation, and that was effectively strategy gone wrong when he had dominated the weekend and fully deserved to win.

“His frustrations on Sunday as he realised Red Bull had pitted and he hadn't were fully justified and understandable. His team had let him down at that point. They should have pitted and were caught napping by Red Bull."

Having said that, Polyon also believes Hamilton would have annoyed his Mercedes team with how many public complaints he made during the race on the team radio.

“That said, complaining once is one thing, but we heard Hamilton mention it a number of times during the final 20 laps or so,” Palmer added.

“The team will have been perfectly aware of their mistake. That was clear with the way Ricciardo was making light work of the rest of F1's heavy-hitting drivers out front to take an easy win.

“As much as Hamilton will have been annoyed about the error, for him to keep going on about it must have been annoying for the engineers.

“There's nothing they can do about it once it's happened. It's in the past and it felt like Hamilton was distracted by his disappointment and never really got going again afterwards.

“A public shaming of the strategists will only up the pressure on them as well, and might give them a few more doubts about these decisions in the future."