The car is not fast enough. It is as simple as that for Lewis Hamilton, whose body language going into the Spanish Grand Prix tomorrow has been more revealing than the words coming out of his mouth. He is not happy.

Racing drivers live to go fast and to win. The great ones - the Sennas and Schumachers - do not only want to win but need to win and the failure to do so, or the failure to have the means to do so, a fast car, makes their life a misery.

At some point between the Malaysian Grand Prix and the race in Bahrain that followed it three weeks ago, Hamilton’s mood changed and he lost the spring in his step. Here in Spain the 23-year-old Briton, who was runner-up in the World Championship last year, has been in a similarly subdued mood.

The tone of Hamilton’s press brief-ings has changed. The questions are not about success and more successes but about reasons for failure. Is Hamilton worried about his ability to set up the car? Is his car good enough? Has he managed to get over what happened in Bahrain? He must wonder what he has done wrong, apart from press the wrong button at the start of the last race, which led to a dismal finish in thirteenth place.

Hamilton has talked in recent days of this year’s McLaren, the MP-24, as being only “quite good”. Carefully chosen words that are some way off the more familiar tributes to the “fantastic” or “awesome” machine that he drove last year to nine podium finishes in his first nine races. After two sessions of practice yesterday, during which he finished third and eleventh, he complained of poor balance in the new car. “We didn’t make the progress we wanted,” he said.

At some point McLaren have slipped in the all-important aerodynamic battle with Ferrari and against BMW Sauber, the newcomers at Formula One’s top table. After a possibly misleading season-opening victory at the Australian Grand Prix, in which Hamilton drove unchallenged from pole to flag, the Woking-based team have drifted, or perhaps been found out in the design race.

Barring a sudden reversal in form or a race in which extraordinary events intervene on one of the most predictable of circuits, Hamilton is unlikely to win tomorrow. His McLaren and that of Heikki Kovalainen, his teammate, look to be about half a second a lap slower than the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa and the fast-flowing layout of the Circuit de Catalunya is expected to suit the Italian cars better than the silver arrows.

What is more, a similar pattern is expected at the next race in Turkey in two weeks’ time. It may not be until the Monaco classic at the end of May - a twisty circuit that may favour the McLarens - that Hamilton gets the chance to rule the Formula One roost again. By then, Raikkonen could be on the way to retaining the title he snatched from Hamilton last year.

Although the mood music has changed around Hamilton, those working closely with him say that, underneath, the young man is just as he was. One colleague had another explanation for the more “low-voltage” Hamilton, putting it down to nothing more than the progression from season one to season two.

“It’s inevitable when you come into a sport that you are up for it, but it’s a bit different in the second year when you’ve been there and done that,” the colleague said. “Everything’s going to change. The spark’s still there, but Lewis feels it all differently because he’s got a year’s experience and a year to look back on.”