SAKHIR, Bahrain — Lewis Hamilton doubts he will be in the running for victories at the opening rounds of the new Formula One season after struggling for performance during preseason testing.
His Mercedes team, which has won the last eight constructors’ championships, has not looked competitive during this week’s three-day test in Bahrain, while rivals Ferrari and Red Bull have shown promising pace.
Testing lap times can often be misleading when trying to understand the true competitive picture, but Hamilton insists Mercedes’ struggle is real.
“I’m sure everyone can figure it out, we’re not the quickest at the moment,” he said during a press conference on Saturday. “Ferrari looks to be the quickest and perhaps Red Bull, and then maybe us or McLaren.
“I don’t know, but we’re certainly not at the top.”
When asked if he was concerned that the lack of performance would limit his ability to fight for this year’s title, the seven-time world champion added: “Obviously it’s a little bit too early to get into that, or have those kind of thoughts, but at the moment I don’t think we’ll be competing for wins.
“But there is potential within our car to get us there — we’ve just got to learn to extract it and fix some of the problems. That’s what we are working on and everyone is doing an incredible job back at the factory working as hard as they can, but we have some hurdles to overcome.
“Obviously next week we’ll get a much better showing of our pace but I think people will be surprised maybe. People keep saying that we keep talking ourselves down but it’s a bit different this year.”
Last year, Mercedes appeared to struggle throughout the three days of pre-season testing in Bahrain only to win the opening race at the same circuit a week later. However, the problems in 2021 were different to those faced by the team under F1’s new technical regulations, and Hamilton doubts a quick turnaround will be possible in time for next weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
“It feels a lot different,” he…
Source : espn
