- Lewis Hamilton feels the new Mercedes W13 is not up to the task
- He spoke at the end of testing pre-season in Barcelona
- The is with W13 is balancing which makes Hamilton feel that the race goes to Red Bull or Ferrari
As the 2022 season for Formula One (F1) edges closer, Lewis Hamilton says his Mercedes team is not racing for a win adding that there is a big problem.
Mercedes set the fastest time to start pre-season in Barcelona, but they haven’t done very well in Bahrain when it comes to lap times.
At the start of this week’s final test, they showed off a new W13 car that looked very different from the one they used in Barcelona.
Even so, problems with the W13’s balance and porpoising (when a car bounces when it loses and gains downforce) made Hamilton nervous about the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix on March 20.
“At the moment, I don’t think we will be competing for wins,” the seven-time F1 champion said on Saturday.
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.
Lewis Hamilton test in Barcelona. Photo/F1
“We are not the quickest at the moment. I think Ferrari look to be the quickest, perhaps Red Bull and then maybe us or McLaren, I don’t know. But we are currently not at the top.”
When Mercedes’ W12 was tested in Bahrain last year, it looked like it was hard to drive. But, Hamilton beat Max Verstappen to win the first race at the same place.
Hamilton, on the other hand, said this year’s situation was different. He added that, even though he had doubts about Mercedes’ car, he still thought it had a lot of potential.
“It feels a lot different [to 2021],” the British driver says. “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.”
Mercedes’ chances in the first two races of the season, which start in Bahrain and then move to Saudi Arabia, aren’t good. But Hamilton thinks his team can get over their problems.
“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, 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.”
Lewis Hamilton. Photo/Planet F1
The AlphaTauri of Pierre Gasly was in close competition with Hamilton on Saturday morning. In the past, Mercedes would have expected to cruise by this type of car.
Gasly agreed with Hamilton that Mercedes needs to improve if they want to compete with their rivals at the top of the race grid.
“I was quite surprised to be fighting with Lewis for a couple of laps,” Gasly said. “It was entertaining, it was interesting also to follow and get some data and feeling from following other cars.
“I could see Lewis was struggling as well and I can see they do have some work to be fighting right at the top.”
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