“Mercedes don’t look as good as they were in the past”: Pierre Gasly shares his honest assessment on the Silver Arrows after ‘battling’ with Lewis Hamilton on track in Bahrain

After battling against Lewis Hamilton and his W13 during the Bahrain test, Pierre Gasly feels that Mercedes aren’t as strong as before. 

Taking something concrete out of pre-season tests is tough for people who have no access to the data. Mercedes were adamant after their test, that their cars were facing issues which they weren’t able to solve.

In spite of the Mercedes team members and drivers openly highlighting their difficulties, other drivers and most fans refuse to believe them. This is mainly because the German outfit are known to have resorted to ‘sandbagging’ techniques in previous campaigns.

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz insists that the Silver Arrows were not running their W13 on full power. The Spaniard says his team has data to prove the same.

During the final round of testing on Saturday, Alpha Tauri’s Pierre Gasly took to the Sakhir Circuit, to practice a race scenario by battling Hamilton’s Mercedes.

After the feisty ‘mock battle’ was over, Gasly shared his thoughts on the fight. It’s fair to say that the Frenchman does not have high hopes from the Brackley based team this season.

“I think the conclusion is Mercedes probably doesn’t look as good as they were in the past,” Gasly said.

Also read: Lando Norris thinks McLaren will have to consider Haas as their rival in Bahrain GP

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell aren’t feeling confident ahead of the season

Mercedes expect Ferrari and Red Bull to be a step ahead of them come the start of the campaign. The former in particular is a team everyone would be watching out for.

The gains made by the Italian team are believed to be massive, particularly in terms of engine durability. In this new era of F1 with new technical regulations, reliability seems to be the main concern for most.

Red Bull too were facing problems during testing. However, a late aero-upgrade brought in saw Max Verstappen soar to the top of the timing charts. The upgrades helped the Austrian team to counter their slow pace around low-speed corners.

Taking all these factors into account, the Mercedes drivers don’t feel optimistic ahead of the Bahrain GP.

“It is too early to have those kind of thoughts about the world championship,” Hamilton said. “But at the moment I don’t think we will be competing for wins.”

“There is potential within our car to get us there. We’ve just got to learn to be able to extract it and fix some of the problems, which is what we’re working on.”

Also read: Alpha Tauri boss explains why they won’t be able to copy the Mercedes sidepod design