Team principal Toto Wolff: Mercedes could lap half a second slower than Red Bull and Ferrari
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Updated 19/03/2022 at 21:28 GMT
While Mercedes appeared somewhat relieved to place in fifth with Lewis Hamilton in qualifying at the Bahrain Grand Prix circuit on Saturday, team principal Toto Wolff was more circumspect. He believes that the German team could lose around half a second every lap on the Red Bull and Ferrari cars ahead of them.
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Mercedes boss Toto Wolff believes that his team could lose half a second every lap to Red Bull and Ferrari.
The Austrian and Italian teams have grown into the circuit and new season regulations since they arrived in Bahrain, first for last weekend’s testing sessions, and now at Free Practice and qualifying.
Current world champion Max Verstappen dominated for much of the last two days but he took second place on the grid for Sunday’s race, behind Charles Leclerc. Carlos Sainz is third, and Sergio Perez completes a lockout on the front four for the teams.
After struggling and hinting at serious ‘problems’ for the longer term for Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton pulled off something of a surprise by finishing fifth fastest, and teammate George Russell is in ninth.
While Wolff acknowledged that a lack of new tyres caused a problem for his drivers, he wondered if there would not be an insurmountable gap over the course of a full Grand Prix.
"I think we are seven-tenths behind with one car, that is where we are. We had only one run on the new tyre in Q3, that's probably another two-three tenths, so realistically it's about half a second that we are missing on a single lap," Wolff told Sky Sports.
"Let's see tomorrow. I'm a little bit wary about where we will be tomorrow, but in any case it's learning."
Russell added: "Q2 I was pretty happy, to be honest, the car felt good, I was happy with the warm-up and I just tried something different and we only had one set of tyres, and I really pushed on my out lap and I got to Turn 1 and I just had no grip and I went one second slower than I did in Q2. I was expecting to go a couple of tenths faster.
"It was a real shame. I'm glad I tried something, but it's easy in retrospect. We know we're not where we want to be and obviously P9 is much lower down than where the car is, but we're doing everything we can to try to get the car back to the front and fighting with the Ferrari's and Red Bulls."
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