F1 restarts in just over a week’s time, and all 20 cars will take to the track for the Bahrain Grand Prix, marking the start of the 2022 Formula 1 season.
The last FIA-approved pre-season test ended this weekend and at the end of it, the Mercedes team seemed to be lagging behind. So much so that seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton said that he “doesn’t think Mercedes will fight for victory” in several post-testing interviews, including the official F1 website.
A statement that reigning world champion Max Verstappen did not believe at all. “It’s always like that,” exclaimed the Dutchman.
“If a team that everyone expects to do well then they say: ‘Oh no, we are definitely not the favourites’. Then, a week later, everything is fine and they say ‘Oh no, but we changed everything in a week. It’s crazy, an incredible job. Thanks to all the people at the factory!'”
And to be fair to Max, that’s exactly what happened last year when Mercedes looked bad in winter testing before Lewis Hamilton won the first race of the season ahead of Verstappen.
“If this was the first year they were doing it, I might believe them, but they’ve been doing it for five or six years now and they keep surprising us at the first race,” said Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz on Friday.
Bluff or real crisis for Mercedes? As always in motorsport, the truth will come out during the race.
Hamilton said the scenario was different this year claiming:
“It feels a lot different [to 2021], it’s not going to look as good as it did last year, with the difficult session we had… and then switch over to the race. I think we have far bigger challenges this time and turnarounds that will take a lot longer. From what I’m told, we have a lot of pace to find,
“But there is potential within our car to get us there,” he added. “We’ve just got to learn to extract it and fix some of the problems, which is what we are working on. Everyone is doing such an incredible job back at the factory, working as hard as they can, but we have some hurdles to overcome.” reports formula1.com.
Who writes your headlines? Is the slagging match which does not seem true in the text just a way of of garnering clicks? You are damaging your credibility and that of the sport on my view
Why is it so important that this topic has to be published when Max should be focusing on his defense of that given title.
Max so childish 🙄… always have something to say about LH and team. Grow up boy 👞
Judge, why did you remove a criticism of the headline wording and how it affects the credibility of this site, but left that Elsie’s triggered comment?
(the comment is visible again, disregard above)
if ever you’ve tried using the WordPress app on your mobile phone when it comes to approving moderating comments, you’ll soon understand.. clunky and slow, chops and changes then tells you of comments pending approval from 3 weeks ago you had no clue existed 😵💫 don’t read too much into things netape
Start growing up kid..
Not just Max, Sainz also said that. Mark Hamilton’s ending words. There is no doubt that they are playing the political game on track and off it. This disgusting behaviour will not stop until F1 is rid of the two villains for whom winning is the only thing. The joke is that he trumpets constantantly that he wants to be known as the most fair driver EVER 🙂
Seriously?? Mercedes were not great in the first half of the season and only came strong in the second half. Same old bs from red bull. Here we go, same old mind games. Perhaps they have another ace up their sleeve with the new race director….?
Whenever in any sport is their no mind games, it’s a fact of life nowadays since social media. The things I’ve heard about Mercedes new W13 certainly contradicts everything Lewis is saying and a lot of what Max says is right. I also heard that following their success last season, although gifted by Masi, they are playing catch up. They have a lot of new funding and a great new car but it’s not ready to compete with Mercedes or Ferrari just yet.
Despite what you saw in testing, that never tells you anything as all teams are keeping their true performance under wraps and with Horner being the devious bugger he is I’m not sure what I heard about Red Bull is not just fake news but I guess we will find out when practice starts in Bahrain. One thing for sure is it’s going to be a ding dong season with really fast Mercedes and Ferrari and maybe Red Bull surprising us, can’t wait.
That new funding does not have much influence. The budgetcap prevents that. Most of that funding will go into Max’s salary.