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Lewis Hamilton stresses importance of resolving set-up woes for 2016

"I need to figure that out, there must be a way," says world champion

Image: Hamilton has now suffered six succession Saturday defeats to Nico Rosberg

Lewis Hamilton says it is important for his title defence in 2016 that he understands why set-up tweaks to Mercedes' car have contributed to the "terrible" balance he has suffered amid Nico Rosberg's streak of pole positions.

For the sixth race in succession at the Abu Dhabi GP, Hamilton lost out to his Mercedes team-mate in Saturday's qualifying battle with his deficit to pole the biggest yet - nearly four tenths of a second.

In a bid to cure the problems which have afflicted his qualifying pace since Singapore in September, Hamilton opted to remove part of the W06's rear suspension this weekend, although later admitted the move had backfired.

And although Sunday's race represents the final one for Mercedes' 2015 car, Hamilton says the same development direction will be carried on into next season too.

"Right now what we have is going to go into next year, so of course it's something I'm thinking about," he told reporters in Abu Dhabi.

"I was sitting with my engineer and we really need to work out how to rectify this. I've got this great graph that shows you all the races and 'up' is being slower and 'down' is being quicker. All 12 [opening races], apart from Barcelona, the car was great. But since then it's been terrible laps, terrible balance - particularly today.

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Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton says it could be tough to overtake on race day around the Yas Marina circuit.

"So I need to figure that out, there must be a way. Nico's car looks like it's really well underneath him."

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Hamilton also confirmed there was no going back for Mercedes since the changes were introduced.

"They said they don't believe they made the car particularly slower, but it definitely isn't faster," he added.

"We can't go back to where it was before because they don't want to go back to where they were before."

Although the world champion acknowledges the removal of the suspension part will also likely cost him performance in Sunday's season-ending race, he admits the W06 still feels better over the longer distance.

What we learnt in Abu Dhabi qualy
What we learnt in Abu Dhabi qualy

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"It's not over still," he insisted. "We've still got a good fight… in the race generally it's quite good, so just trying to figure out why that is in qualifying."

Hamilton, who has also been beaten in the last two races by Rosberg, won from second on the grid in Abu Dhabi last year and a repeat on Sunday would match his career-best haul of 11 wins in the same season.

Watch the Abu Dhabi GP live on Sky Sports F1. Race-show coverage begins at 11:30am on Sunday with lights out at 1pm. Watch all the Abu Dhabi GP for £6.99 on NOW TV. No contract.

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