Lewis Hamilton said his Mercedes is ‘not the quickest at the moment’ as he finished ninth in the morning session
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Published 12/03/2022 at 13:44 GMT
Lewis Hamilton said his Mercedes car is ‘not the quickest at the moment’ and backs the Ferrari and Red Bull teams to set the pace at next weekend’s season opener in Bahrain. Hamilton was downbeat about his chances this season as he set the ninth fastest speed in the morning test session, over three seconds off Red Bull’s Sergio Perez.
Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain and Mercedes talks in the Drivers Press Conference during Day Three of F1 Testing at Bahrain International Circuit on March 12, 2022 in Bahrain, Bahrain.
Image credit: Getty Images
Lewis Hamilton has given a downbeat assessment of his team’s chances as his run of pre-season testing drew to a close.
Speaking after the morning session on the third and final day of testing in Bahrain, Hamilton was pessimistic ahead of next weekend’s season opener, saying his team is unlikely to compete for race wins.
George Russell will pilot the Mercedes W13 car for the afternoon session after Hamilton could only deliver the ninth fastest time of the morning, 3.112 seconds off the pace of front runner Sergio Perez in the Red Bull.
"We are not the quickest at the moment," he said. "Ferrari look quickest, then perhaps Red Bull, and maybe McLaren. But we’re currently not at the top.
At the moment, I don’t think we’ll be competing for wins.
"At the moment, I don’t think we’ll be competing for wins."
At the end of Day 2 of testing, Carlos Sainz was suspicious of similar claims from the German team, suggesting that they were driving within themselves to deceive the field.
But Hamilton moved to dismiss the accusation in his post-testing comments.
"Next week we will get a much better showing of our pace but I think people will be surprised maybe," he said. "Or at least people keep talking about us talking ourselves down. But it’s a bit different this year."
Hamilton has admitted to struggling to “tame” the car this season that has suffered from quite drastic understeer and the dreaded ‘porpoising’ that has plagued the teams.
Mercedes have seen the bobbing that has characterised this season's testing more than most, as they contend with the reintroduction of ‘ground-effect’ to the regulations.
They caused controversy earlier in the week as they unveiled a radical new ‘zero sidepod’ design that has drawn lots of attention but failed to produce the lap times to match.
And it is thought that the team will need similarly large steps to reach top pace, beyond the tweaks and tinkering that teams rely on in the run up to race day.
“There's a lot different,” he said “It's not as good. I don't think we're going to make it look as good as we did last year with a difficult session we had in practice and then switch over to the race.
“I think we have far bigger challenges this time, and they are not one week turnarounds.
“I think they will take a little bit longer. But from what I'm told we have a considerable amount of pace to find.”
Mercedes faced similar struggles at testing before the start of last season before turning things around to take the first win of the season.
But having lost the championship on the final lap of last year to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and the pace of the Ferrari’s turning heads, this season looks set to be closer than most.
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