Lewis Hamilton had been relaxed an upbeat prior to the start of the Formula One season opening race in Bahrain. Mercedes had their first 1-2 in any free practice session since Hungary last year and their long run pace looked competitive with Ferrari.

The seven times world champion had an underwhelming qualifying and finished just P9 some three tenths slower than team mate George Russell who started he race third behind Charles Leclerc and pole sitter Max Verstappen.

 

 

 

Dejected Lewis after the race

At lights out, George made short work of overtaking the Ferrari ahead of him while Lewis Hamilton struggled to make ground stuck in P9 behind the McLaren pair and Fernando Alonso until the first round of pit stops.

Hamilton found the car easier to drive after the final change of tyres passing Oscar Piastri at turn one on his way to finish in seventh place some 50 seconds behind the race winner. Despite all the talk of being closer to Red Bull this year, the seven times world champion was exactly the same distance behind Verstappen as he was a year ago, with Russel fairing little better just over 3 seconds ahead of his team mate.

After the race a dejected Hamilton revealed: “We probably feel a bit of disappointment within the team. I was definitely hoping that we would be better this weekend then we were,” Lewis told Sky Sports F1.

“But it was a tough race, it was very close with everybody and degradation is high with the car. There are plenty of areas we can improve. We were further back from the Red Bulls than we thought as well.”

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Hamilton clutching at straws

When asked about how he felt the car would go at a very different kind of circuit in Jeddah next week, Lewis smiled and after an extended intake of breath and long pause said: “I mean, the car is reliable.” said Hamilton, somewhat clutching at straws.

“But I think it was a struggle in the car. The platform…I was giving it everything, but there wasn’t a lot of performance there compared to some of the others.

“I think if I would have qualified better, I would be a good couple of places ahead because the last stint was good. It was about discovery. I found out a lot of things about the car to improve and I’m sure the team will.”

Even had Hamilton improved by a place or two the gap to Red Bull would still have been huge as George Russell proved as he finished in P5. Deep inside Lewis may feel justified having made the decision to move to Ferrari next season who despite having their own difficulties finished third and fourth behind the Red Bull drivers.

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Russell reveals engineers mistake

Russell revealed the Mercedes mechanics had made a rookie error when deciding how to set up the car and it was this which caused most of the difficulties both he and Lewis suffered.

“We both faced a similar problem,” Russell said in the media pen. “For whatever reason we had massive engine overheating and the battery wasn’t working properly.

”I made a really good start, got into second and then was like ‘here we go’, these big red alarms on my steering wheel. I had no battery left, went to turn my power down and I was losing fourth tenths just in power.”

With the Mercedes W15 overheating, the automatic battery recharge failed causing a loss of power for both Lewis and George.

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Temperatures hotter next week

“It was so difficult holding them off [the Ferraris], I’m surprised we managed to do it for the first 10 laps or so. Then we just went backwards thereafter. It was a shame we didn’t show any real potential of this car, but a bit of a strange day.”

Russell revealed each of the teams have “five or six cooling specifications” and despite Bahrain being described by a number of people as “freeing cold” Mercedes had completely misjudged the amount of cooling their power unit required.

“We went with the most aggressive option and clearly just went too far. It was simply a decision, we got the wrong bodywork with the conditions in Bahrain.”

The temperatures next weekend in Saudi Arabia are expected to be double of those inn Bahrain yet Russell insists there will be no problem with overheating at round 2 of the calendar. The future Mercedes lead driver also noted that Ferrari have generally been strong in Bahrain while for Mercedes the circuit has not been their strongest.

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Wolff: “We made many mistakes”

Even so Russell believes, “but we would have been in a fight for P3 if it wasn’t for the cooling issues. You can’t ‘ifs, buts, carrots and nuts’ kind of thing but we showed the full potential of the car in qualifying. Normally our race pace is faster than qualifying. In the race we got it wrong.”

The Red Bull 1-2 was a repeat of the F1 season opener 12 months ago, but was the first in the last nine races. Verstappen’s dominance and 25 second advantage over the next team at the chequered flag has led to concern this year will be another where the dutch driver is a long way ahead of the field

Toto Wolff believes Mercedes have demonstrated “glimpses of performance” but made “many mistakes” which proved costly as the team starts to rebuild a challenge to the world champions. Even so the Mercedes boss praised the performance of the world champion driver.

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Mercedes a shadow of their former selves

“Max was in a different galaxy. We need to look at ourselves to see why we lost so much performance on the hard tyres,” said Wolff.

“We got the cooling level wrong and therefore you need to lift and coast and you lose performance in the tyres, so it was a bit of a vicious circle.

“It was odd. As the race unfolded we had to lift and coast more to manage the temperatures on the power unit. We closed it up too much, that was the main issue. Then we didn’t have the pace weirdly.”

Mercedes look to be a shadow of their former all conquering selves and while opting for the wrong cooling package is not a fundamental problem going forward, it reflects the state of the team reeling from the shock that it is to lose its star driver who brought them so much fame and glory.

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