Mercedes, the title defending team this year, is keeping their guards up for the rest of the season against Ferrari.
The German team located in UK is expecting a bounce back from their Italian rival Ferrari at Bahrain Grand Prix.
Mercedes dominated the season opening race with both of their drivers. Valterri Bottas marked the victory to his name while his team mate followed him to podium at 2nd place. However, Ferrari’s drivers were not able to make it to podium as they were only able to fetch fourth and fifth position.
Toto Wolff, Mercedes team principal, relied on pre-season testing results where Ferrari dominated over-all. He expected more from them at Melbourne.
“We’ve seen the potential of Ferrari’s package in Barcelona; we expect them to come back strong in Bahrain,” he said.
Wolff was also positive for the trio competition this season with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen on board. He expect them to be “in the mix as well”.
“Claiming the maximum 44 points race from the first race was a fantastic result,” Wolff said.
“But the fight has only just begun: Ferrari will try everything they can to hit back and Melbourne showed that Red Bull will have something to say in the fight, too.
“After the Barcelona test, we felt that we were the challengers (to Ferrari). Whatever the Melbourne result says, our mindset hasn’t changed since then.
“One race doesn’t determine the pecking order for the rest of the season. We need to extract every bit of performance from our package and keep on working hard to improve the car over the weekend to be competitive.”
Mercedes lead driver Hamilton made to pole position but later was beaten by his team Bottas to victory because of the damage done to a light of his car. Additionally an early stop also contributed to his second position.
Hamilton was also shocked at Ferrari performance after what he had seen at pre-season testings.
Hamilton said after the race in Australia, “I think everyone is. No-one was expecting to have a gap like that. What was shown was that they were ahead and it wasn’t the case for this weekend.
“We did our normal job. I’m sure they will come back strong so we have to stay on our toes.”
Mattia Binotto, Ferrari team principal, said: “In Bahrain, as a team, we will have to ensure that we have understood and rectified the areas where we were weak in Australia, which therefore meant we were unable to fully exploit our car’s potential.
“In Bahrain, we expect to see the effect of the corrections we have made, although we are well aware that our competitors will once again be very strong. With that in mind, we are keen to get back on track and face up to them.”
