Lewis Hamilton baffled by Mercedes’ pace

Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes were left frustrated after qualifying in Bahrain as Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen ended up on the front row.

The W09 Mercedes was considered to be the fastest in Australia and it looked like an ominous season for all other F1 teams with Hamilton dishing out that ‘special’ lap in qualifying, however, the tables have turned in Bahrain and it seems like Ferrari have the fastest ‘one lap pace’ this time round.

Hamilton was actually baffled by Mercedes’ pace and conceded that he didn’t have answers regarding it.

“I don’t have any answers, I don’t know why we don’t have the pace that we had, this weekend.” Hamilton said.

“Ferrari didn’t have the pace in the last race for whatever reason, now they are back to normal, maybe?

“We’ll find out in the races to come. But what we know is Ferrari has been quick here all weekend and we’ve not been able to match them.

“Looking at Vettel’s lap, it didn’t look like anything spectacular, it was a very clean lap, but there were a couple of areas where they are particularly stronger than us.

“When I looked at their lap from the last race they looked pretty well balanced also, and if you look at my lap here it doesn’t look tacky – it was quite a clean lap in general.

“It’s not been that difficult [for Mercedes]. Ferrari were just quicker in the end.” he added.

Hamilton has also been handed a 5 place grid penalty because a gearbox change  and this will starting from 9th place.

The Brit feels that raceday wouldn’t be much different as Ferrari has had great pace all weekend.

“My long run on the supersoft was really good,” he said.

“Good for us, but we still weren’t quickest.

“It doesn’t really matter what tyre you put on, they are quicker. It has been the case all weekend. Their long runs were quicker on both tyres [supersofts and softs], so it’s likely to be the case tomorrow.

“We’ll try to change that and make sure that’s not the case, but there’s not much we can do other than try our best.”