Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes Formula 1 driver, stresses that the team is not currently in a position to step up for the championship title battle. He remained concerned about the team progress following the struggles in the pre-season testing.
Mercedes found itself in difficult waters of 2022 era with new regulations. The team struggled with its W13 while Hamilton and George Russel found it difficult to drive at best.
The German car manufacturer is unable to come-up with right diagnosis to find itself at the front. Hamilton remained dissatisfied with the team’s progress.
On Saturday, he shared his concerns on its team inability to find itself on the front row for championship battle. Hamilton said: “Obviously it’s a little bit too early to have those kind of thoughts. But at the moment, I don’t think we’ll be competing for wins.
“But there is a potential within our car to get us there. We have just got to be able to extract it and fix some of the problems, which is what we’re working on.”
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Mercedes’ Bahrain struggles are similar to last year test scenarios. However, later it turned around the tide and won the first race. But Hamilton is convinced that both are very different.
He claims that the issues that Mercedes’ is looking to find answers for require more that just set-up tweaks.
“There’s a lot different,” he said “It’s not as good… I don’t think we’re going to make it look as good as we did last year with a difficult session we had in practice and then switch over to the race.
He added: “I think we have far bigger challenges this time, and they are not one week turnarounds.
“I think they will take a little bit longer. But from what I’m told we have a considerable amount of pace to find.”
Despite, Hamilton concerns on the competitiveness, he is still hopeful for a turn-around.
“Everyone’s doing such an incredible job back at the factory, working as hard as they can,” he said. “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 talking about us talking ourselves down, but it’s a bit different this year.”
