A lack of focus could have put Lewis Hamilton's bid for a third consecutive world championship off the rails in 2016, according to Patrick Tambay.
The former F1 driver was speaking after a disastrous Chinese Grand Prix weekend for Hamilton, filled with reliability problems and first-corner damage as he started from dead last.
The Mercedes driver is now 36 points behind his teammate Nico Rosberg, who in Shanghai won his sixth consecutive race.
"Is it 50 points now?" Hamilton asked reporters after the race. "36. Oh, that's not as bad as I thought. I feel pretty good right now," he said.
"There's a long, long way to go. Lots can happen. It's just I don't have any more jokers available really."
Experts are wondering if Hamilton's apparently unflappable mood is in any way connected to his early troubles in 2016.
"He is not focused on the primary objective," Tambay, a driver from the '70s and '80s, told France's RMC.
"He has already been world champion and perhaps he is not putting in the same effort, with the same determination, the same quality of work and application that Nico Rosberg does now."
The season continues with the Russian Grand Prix on May 1.
