Lewis Hamilton acknowledged Mercedes’ unexpected performance gap to Red Bull following the season’s opening race in Bahrain.
Starting from ninth on the grid, Hamilton concluded the race in seventh place, trailing teammate George Russell by two positions. With Red Bull securing a dominant one-two finish and Russell, the lead Mercedes driver, finishing 46 seconds behind race winner Max Verstappen, Hamilton admitted Mercedes had anticipated a closer challenge to the reigning champions.
“I think we probably feel a little bit of disappointment within the team,” Hamilton conveyed to Sky Sports post-race. “I was definitely hoping we would be better this weekend than we were. It was a tough race. It’s very close with everybody. Degradation is, obviously, high with the car.
There’s definitely plenty of areas in which we can improve. We’re obviously further back to the Red Bulls than we thought we were as well.”
Despite Hamilton’s efforts to tailor his car’s setup for the race, having compromised his qualifying performance, he failed to extract the anticipated performance gains during the grand prix.
“I mean, the car’s reliable, but I think it was a struggle in the car today,” Hamilton admitted. “I was giving everything, but there wasn’t a lot of performance there compared to some of the others ahead of us. I think if I qualified better, I naturally would have been a good couple of places ahead, because the last stint was good.
So it was about discovery today. I found out a lot about the car and there’s a lot that we can improve on I’m sure the team will.”
Both Hamilton and Russell were instructed to lift-and-coast during the race to manage power unit temperatures. However, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff clarified that this directive did not fully account for their performance deficit.
“It’s a weird one, because the cooling cost us quite a lot,” Wolff remarked. “The moment you need to lift-and-coast, the tyres are not in the right window anymore and then everything goes south. But that’s something we understand. But nevertheless, the pace was worse than we expected.”
While Bahrain’s circuit characteristics differ from other tracks early in the season, Wolff believes Mercedes’ performance in Bahrain reflects their true position.
“Given the issues, I think this is where we are,” Wolff asserted. “Third-quickest team behind the Ferraris and the Red Bull – obviously galaxies away from Max. So we need to analyse.”
