Reigning Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes still has “a hill to climb” to catch Red Bull and return to its familiar position as F1’s leading outfit, despite having made gains with the W12 since pre-season testing.
Mercedes, undefeated so far in the hybrid era over a full season, trailed the pace-setting Red Bull team over three days of pre-season testing in Bahrain and maintained a public position heading into the season opener at the same venue that it was genuinely on the back foot.
And its rhetoric seems to have held up on the opening day of practice ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen topping both practice sessions and Hamilton finishing 0.235s off Verstappen’s Friday benchmark – with McLaren driver Lando Norris slotting in between the two.
“Obviously coming into this weekend we’ve done a lot of work in the past week and I think we have taken a step forward – but we still have more to do,” Hamilton said after practice.
“With tyres [performance] and downforce reduced [for 2021], the global balance has just shifted, and it wasn’t where we wanted.
“This weekend it’s looking better but still not perfect. We’re just working as hard as we can, we’ve got great people in the background. I know that we still have a hill to climb but we’re staying positive.”
Asked whether he was surprised by the Friday leaderboards, Hamilton said: “I think we thought Red Bull would be as fast as they are, if not faster. So, we know they’re leading at the moment.
“McLaren are looking great and it’s great to see them taking the step. It’ll be interesting to see how the long runs are.”
Hamilton stressed that “stability” was the main area of improvement for the W12, and this was largely echoed by team-mate Valtteri Bottas, who had radioed in to call the car “undriveable” during a late-FP2 long run.
“First of all, it felt better than in testing, in terms of how the car was feeling, et cetera,” said Bottas, having finished the day fifth-fastest.
“So that’s good. But also it felt like we’re still not yet there with the car balance.
“We still have plenty of work to do if we want to fight for the pole and for the win.
“We’re definitely in the mix. McLaren, yeah, they looked really strong today. Red Bull [looks] as expected.
“I think we’re there. I don’t think we’re the fastest at the moment but we’re not far off and we have a clear target of where we want to be.”
Elaborating on that radio message in particular, Bottas said: “The last long run we did was pretty inconsistent, I couldn’t really put any laps together, the car, as I said, felt undriveable at times. A bit puzzled, but it’s Friday and that’s why we’re practicising.”
While his drivers felt that Red Bull ended Friday as the team to beat, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff was more cautious in estimating how the Silver Arrows stacked up versus Red Bull.
“It’s just a real dogfight. When you overlay the fastest laps and even the long runs, it’s just so very close that every kilogramme of fuel load can make quick a big swing.
“So we don’t really know. I think we are definitely closer here than we have been in testing, but I wouldn’t know where to position us versus Red Bull.”
He did point out, however, in light of Bottas’s troubled long run that “the long runs from many competitors – the McLarens, the Red Bulls – have been flat [in terms of laptime], there was not a lot of degradation”, indicating that Mercedes would have to work to achieve the same stint longevity.
