Lewis Hamilton claims that Mercedes’ Formula 1 team is in deep trouble this season. Mercedes revealed its W13 on February 18th, 2022 with which it has struggled in pre-season testing. The struggles remain evident in qualifying sessions in Bahrain Grand Prix.
The British driver asserts that the issues are not trivial rather “fundamental”. It gave the drivers a hard time to find the good place on the grid. The team could only managed to take fifth place on grid.
The German manufacturer remain unable to find pace through-out the pre-season testing. It faced porpoising issue that hindered its ability to float on track. It also restricted its ability to remain competitive on track.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari F1 driver, finished fastest in Bahrain qualifying session with pole position. Max Verstappen finished second fastest while Hamilton trailed to fifth fastest. George Russell finished down the line on ninth place facing tyre temperature issues.
Hamilton Struggles
Hamilton showed his content for fifth place after being unable to exploit W13.
The seven-time world champion explained what Mercedes’ is struggling with. He claims that porpoising issue is restricting W13 ability to find the pace. He asserted that the problem will not be solved with change in setup. Rather, it will require fundamental change.
“There’s been a crazy amount of work and conversations here until late, working on just trying to just extract everything amongst the fact that we still have the fundamental issues,” Hamilton said.
“No set-up change necessarily is going to fix those in the short term. We definitely didn’t expect to be fifth, and so I’m happy to be in there. The guys ahead, they are a lot quicker, six tenths is a lot of time.
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“But yes, I do know there’s potential, and I think just got to work very, very fast and be precise over these next weeks to try and close that gap as soon as we can.”
Hamilton explained that the porpoising issue limits the down-force required to fight the rivals.
“They’ve got their cars in a much better position, and they’re extracting, maybe not all the downforce, I don’t know, but you’d assume they are extracting a lot more than we are,” Hamilton said.
“Ride quality is probably something that needs to be improved with our car, not only with that bouncing, but it’s in a lot of other places as well.”
