Lewis Hamilton lost his nose on the first bend and the wheels entirely came off his season in a disastrous Chinese Grand Prix.
The world champion’s jinxed title defence went from bad to worse on one of his favourite battle grounds as Nico Rosberg won yet again to take a cavernous 36 point lead.
While Hamilton had to scrap from dead last, though five pit stops, to claim seventh.
Afterwards he admitted: “I have no jokers left. Things have to go a lot better from now on.”
While he bemoaned a damaged car “handling like a four poster bed” teammate Rosberg could have had 40 winks and still collected one of the easiest victories of his career.
His margin at the end over Sebastian Vettel second and Daniil Kvyat third was a colossal 38 seconds.
Any thoughts of Ferrari spoiling the script went out the window on the first bend of the first lap.
Vettel swerved to avoid the Russian and managed to wipe out all three of Rosberg’s key rivals at a stroke.
The four-time champion careered into his own teammate and the eddies rippled through the field until Felipe Nasr hit Hamilton.
The Merc man had come into the weekend in philosophical mood after two recent defeats but they must have felt like the good old days after blighted weekends like this.
It started with a five place grid penalty, failed boost system, last place start, being rammed by Nasr, broken nose, damaged aerodynamics and five visits to the pits.
While Hamilton had a race he will not want to remember while the man in the other Mercedes had a day he will not want to forget.
He roared into the history books with his sixth win on the trot to join an exclusive club that cannot even count Hamilton as a member.
Only three drivers in history have won as many on the bounce: Michael Schumacher, Vettel and Alberto Ascari.
More importantly, to Rosberg at least, will be the fact that no driver has won as consistently and failed to become world champion.
The gap is such that Hamilton will almost certainly still be playing catch up in three months when he comes to Silverstone.
“The car was pretty damaged by that accident,” said Hamilton.
“It’s a pretty big hit points-wise today - but I’ll just have to do what I can. Onwards and upwards.
“I don’t think I’ve smashed a mirror anywhere. These things are sent to try us.”
“It was a rollercoaster ride, a pretty horrifying race. I was overtaking a lot of people but didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere with all those stops.”
The smallest consolation came, strangely enough, when he was told the points difference to Rosberg.
“It’s 50 something now isn’t it ? Oh, only 36. It’s not as bad as I though. I feel pretty good right now. Wow,” he said.
“It doesn’t feel very good right now because I’ve had one negative after another but there is a long way to go.
“I don’t have the dark cloud over me like I used to when things went wrong.”
“It’s a trying time and there’s lots of emotions going through me at seeing the championship moving further way but this is motor racing, part of the journey.
He even managed a joke: “I finally had a good start. Trust it to happen when I’m dead last!”
At the start of the year few would have argued that a Mercedes driver would be leading by such a margin – but few would have guessed it would be the German who seemed destined to be a perennial number two.
“Nico is walking away with it,” admitted Hamilton.
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