Mercedes Driver Lewis Hamilton seemed genuinely concerned at the end of 2022 pre-season running that the Silver Arrows wouldn’t be in the mix for wins early on this year .
The excessive porpoising (Where a car bounces as it loses and regains down force ) ,lurid over steer moments and struggles to fund consistency through a corner have left Mercedes worried .
“At the moment, I don’t think we will be competing for wins,” said Hamilton on Saturday afternoon. “Obviously next week we will get a much better showing of our pace, but I think [other] people will surprise maybe. People keep talking about us talking ourselves down, but it’s a bit different this year.
The current scenario reminds everyone of 2021 season starting where similar things happened with W12 ,but Mercedes fixed the issues and won the opening race in the same venue .
“It feels a lot different [to 2021],” said Hamilton. “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.”
Mercedes’ new driver George Russell too feels the same about the current condition of W13 .
“I think it’s been pretty productive but very intriguing at the same time. Obviously so much to learn about these 2022 cars, with the tyres. It’s pretty clear some of the issues that a lot of the teams faced with the bouncing, just trying to get on top of that really.
“Yes, it’s definitely bouncing around a lot from within, it’s not the comfiest in all honesty. I don’t really care about comfort if the performance is there but at the moment the performance isn’t there. We are a step behind our rivals, and we do have a lot of work to do between now and next week to understand, because in every condition the Red Bull and the Ferrari seem a step ahead of us.”
He added ,”From the outside it looks drastically different but looks aren’t everything, is what many people say. It’s still the same fundamental car underneath its skin, and it still has the same fundamental issues that we faced in Barcelona.
“As I said, I think we probably optimised the performance a bit more in Barcelona than we did in Bahrain, but nevertheless we are struggling to find how to unlock a bit more. As it stands, Red Bull are looking incredibly strong, Ferrari are looking really solid, and we have some work to do.
“I don’t think they’re exceptional,” he added about Mercedes’ rivals. “I think we’re probably not as competitive as we would like.”
He finished by saying ,“I believe the guys are going get to the bottom of it; there is potential there, we just need to figure out a way to unlock that performance.”
It could all be a different game if Mercedes are sandbagging now .
