sport news Lewis Hamilton arrives in Australia ten years on from Mercedes debut, but is ... trends now

It seems incredible that a decade on from Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes debut he is just about in the same place as where he started with the team.

And that is going into the race weekend knowing that chances of victory are a long shot at best. 

Granted it's in different circumstances, Hamilton is now in the second year of a fallow period at the Silver Arrows who once again look to have underwhelmed over the winter by being unable to build a car capable of winning the world championship. His placings of fifth in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia the early evidence of that.

It's a bit different to when Hamilton first rocked up at a team who were still looking for a way to the top following an unsuccessful three years with Michael Schumacher behind the wheel. 

After switching from McLaren to Mercedes at the start of 2013, it would be fair to say that while talks of winning future world championships were not the stuff of fantasy, the six that followed up to and including 2020 were beyond everyone's wildest estimations - perhaps even the Brit's.

That is no reflection on his overall outstanding ability or even on his own self confidence but just the way Mercedes put a stranglehold on the sport over an unprecedented length of time.

Aside from his first season, where Mercedes were still finding their feet, only in 2016 during a bitter title loss to Nico Rosberg was Hamilton denied the title right up until the last lap of the long fabled and controversial finale of the season ending 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix when Max Verstappen wrestled away the crown.

The Dutchman, though, has looked unbeatable since, and Hamilton hasn't even been able to win a race .

That brings us back to the present day and, on a weekend when Hamilton should be looking back at a wonderful decade at Mercedes, he can be forgiven for now thinking what has gone wrong around him.

Now admittedly Australia has never been a happy hunting ground for him and good memories of Albert Park are curiously few. Hamilton has always been strong around Melbourne on flat out performance but he has only won once at the track with Mercedes back in 2015.

Qualifying third behind the dominant Red Bulls his Mercedes debut ended with a disappointing fifth place finish, while after taking an equally dominant pole a year later he would retire from the race early with an engine failure on the second lap.