Lewis Hamilton has ruled Mercedes out of the battle for victory at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, claiming the team has “considerable” pace to find.
The Brackley-based team wowed the paddock earlier this week with their ‘zeropod’ upgrade for the second Formula 1 pre-season test, but have not shown the kind of performance that was expected.
According to Ferrari, this is because Mercedes is running an engine mode that is hiding their true potential, something that is backed up in GPS data.
But speaking on Friday, Hamilton insisted the W13 is proving a difficult car to handle.
“I mean, you can see on the on-board, tank-slappers left, right and centre. You’re bouncing and bumping and it’s not quite happy at the moment. But we’re trying to tame her,” he said.
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It is true that the Mercedes hasn’t looked as good as some others in the corners, while the amount of porpoising on the straights has also been quite severe.
Given the scale of the problems then, Hamilton doesn’t expect the kind of turnaround the team managed last year when it won in Bahrain despite a difficult pre-season at the same circuit.
“I don’t think it’s going to look as it did last year with the difficult session we had in practice and then switch over into the race,” he said on Saturday.
“I think we have far bigger challenges this time and there not one-week turnarounds, they’ll take a little bit longer. But from what I told, we have a considerable amount of pace to find.”
And just in case you think Mercedes is doing what they have been prone to doing in the past, Hamilton insisted, this time, there are no games.
“Obviously it’s a little bit too early to have those kinds of thoughts. At the moment I don’t think we’ll be competing for wins,” he added when asked about his title chances.
43 laps this morning for @LewisHamilton ? pic.twitter.com/wW3kmcWEsU
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) March 12, 2022
“There is potential within our car to get us there. We’ve just got to extract it and fix our problems.
“That’s what we’re working on. Everyone’s doing a fantastic job, working as hard as they can.
“We have hurdles to overcome. Next week we will have a better showing of our pace. People will be surprised maybe – people think we are talking ourselves down but it’s different this year.”
As for where he expects Mercedes to be, Hamilton concluded: “I’m sure everyone can figure it out, we’re not the quickest at the moment.
“Ferrari looks to be the quickest and perhaps Red Bull, and then maybe us or McLaren. I don’t know, but we’re certainly not at the top.”