Following a promising second place in Saturday morning's sprint, Hamilton faced a recovery race from 18th on the grid.
But the seven-time world champion initially failed to make much progress on his soft tyres, rising to 15th before moving on to the medium compound.
He said his car had so much understeer during the first half of the race that he thought something was broken.
"I thought maybe at the beginning I tapped someone because I have never had so much understeer in my life, so I was turning in at slow speed and waiting, waiting, waiting," Hamilton explained.
"I thought I had damaged something like some of the others because there was debris going everywhere at one point but it was just the set-up that I chose.
"With better decisions on set-up, maybe we would be around where George [Russell, who finished sixth] is but we just have to keep fighting."
Source: Autosport