Hamilton concedes Mercedes not in a position to compete for F1 wins

Lewis Hamilton has given his verdict on Mercedes’ performance in Formula 1 testing, believing it isn’t currently in a position to compete for race wins.

Mercedes hasn’t had the smoothest running across the three-day test in Bahrain, with its W13 struggling to tame ongoing porposing issues and looking a handful out on track.

While the Brackley-based team’s radical sidepod design caused a stir on the opening day of the Bahrain test, Hamilton has lingering doubts around its 2022 prospects ahead of the opening race of the season next week.

Asked if the team’s situation had left him concerned it may not be able to fight for this year’s world championship, Hamilton said, as quoted by Motorsport.com: “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.”

Mercedes suffered similar difficulties in pre-season testing last year only to turn up and win the first race, but Hamilton stresses the team has “far bigger challenges” to overcome this time around.

“There’s a lot different,” Hamilton 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.

“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.”

But despite his initial fears regarding the German manufacturer’s potential competitiveness, Hamilton is optimistic Mercedes can get on top of its issues in the long term.

“Everyone’s doing such an incredible job back at the factory, working as hard as they can,” Hamilton 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.”