Lewis Hamilton admits Mercedes’ advantage from Australia may not be repeated at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
After appearing off the pace in testing, the Silver Arrows surprised everyone with one-two finishes in both qualifying and the race as Ferrari faltered.
Few believe the outcome was an accurate representation of the relative performance of the two teams, however, and the world champion is among them.
“I fully anticipate it will be a lot closer this weekend,” he said in Bahrain on Thursday.
“I assume they [Ferrari] are working hard on understanding where perhaps it went wrong and coming into this weekend, obviously we have the pleasant surprise of being fast in the last race, but it could change here.
“Maybe their car didn’t work, or their tyres weren’t working, for them in the race last and it will work here. So I’m just as excited as you are to see how it pans out.”
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Also unexpected was Valtteri Bottas’ commanding victory by 20 seconds over Hamilton, with Sebastian Vettel suggesting the Briton had let the gap grow.
A small piece of damage to the floor was identified by Mercedes, but Lewis offered a much more believable explanation for the final outcome.
“My engineers had no idea that I was saving the tyres,” he said. “They thought that I was just off the pace, which I’m sure a lot of the public thought.
“But I was saving tyres, saving fuel, making sure that I had enough to push at the end, which is all that I needed to do to finish where I was. I couldn’t do any more to get further ahead and I didn’t need to do any less.”