Lewis Hamilton had an underwhelming result at the Bahrain GP and so did Mercedes. The seven-time champion, in the first race of his final season with the Silver Arrows, finished P7, two places behind George Russell. Hamilton cited that his car setup was different from that of his 25-year-old teammate, which is why he couldn’t finish ahead. However, Russell disagreed with this notion and claimed that the cars were similar.
Speaking to PlanetF1, Hamilton explained how during Thursday practice, their setups were similar, Then on Friday before qualifying, they “veered off”. He added, “He [George Russell] went one way, and I went the other. You could say that the one I was on is not good on a single lap, but I hope it’s good in the race.”
On this, Russell claimed that he didn’t know what these “big differences” in the setups were. He said as per Planet F1, “Because as far as I’m aware with the cars we’re pretty similar.”
Russell added that he doesn’t “focus too much” on what Hamilton is doing with his car setup. He also highlighted that his car was more set up towards the race pace than Lewis’s.
While both Hamilton and Russell were looking quite promising on one lap and race pace in FP2, things changed during qualifying. The 25-year-old pulled off a great lap to get P3 on the grid whereas Hamilton had to settle for P9. This momentarily indicated that Russell prioritized the qualifying pace while Hamilton wanted to make up places in the race.
However, even in the Grand Prix on Saturday, it was Russell who remained ahead, trying to battle for the podium. Meanwhile, Hamilton was trying to battle with the McLaren cars but couldn’t get his car close to Russell.
What else held back Lewis Hamilton and George Russell in Bahrain?
Mercedes did not have an ideal start to their campaign in Bahrain. A 5th place for George Russell and a P7 finish for Lewis Hamilton doesn’t indicate much progress. Still, they feel hopeful given the W15 car is much better than its predecessor and can be a good baseline for making developments down the line.
Mercedes faced some engine cooling issues in the Bahrain GP. Reportedly, they had closed off the cooling louvers on the engine cover which were open during practice, and on top of this, Reuters revealed that the specification of their bodywork was not right which caused the engines to overheat.
That prevented Russell and Hamilton from extracting more power from their engine. Even Williams, which is a Mercedes customer team faced a similar issue. Russell had to undertake lifting and coasting measures to cool his engine, which affected his overall pace. After the Grand Prix, he cited that both he and Hamilton were losing up to 0.4 seconds just due to the power unit issue.
Meanwhile, Hamilton had another bizarre problem that held him back from being better in the race. The seven-time champion’s seat broke shortly after the race started. He reported the same on the radio, but they couldn’t do anything about it and Hamilton drove most of the race while sitting on a broken seat.
