“No set-up change necessarily is going to fix”– Lewis Hamilton speaks on issues with Mercedes

Tanish Chachra | 20/03/2022
"No set-up change necessarily is going to fix"– Lewis Hamilton speaks on issues with Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton talks about the issues with Mercedes as the world champions fail to be their usual self during the Bahrain GP qualifying.

Mercedes in 2022 has started on an unusual note. The Brackley based team couldn’t find that much pace during the Bahrain GP qualifying compared to Red Bull and Ferrari.

Thus, they could not find a better starting spot than P5, from where Lewis Hamilton will start the race today. On the other hand, their new driver George Russell, couldn’t go beyond P9.

So, Mercedes genuinely have some issues, and this time it was not mere sandbagging. But the world champions still want to be in title contention, and it will take them time to find fixes. However, Hamilton claims that currently, there are no fixes for the short term.

“There’s been a crazy amount of work and conversations here until late, working on just trying to just extract everything amongst the fact that we still have the fundamental issues,” Hamilton said.

“No set-up change necessarily is going to fix those in the short term. We definitely didn’t expect to be fifth, and so I’m happy to be in there. The guys ahead, are a lot quicker, six-tenths is a lot of time.”

“But yes, I do know there’s potential, and I think just got to work very, very fast and be precise over these next weeks to try and close that gap as soon as we can.”

Also read: F1 Team Principals 2022: Who are the people in charge of all ten Formula 1 teams for the 2022 season?

Lewis Hamilton claims Ferrari and Red Bull have more downforce

Hamilton talking about Mercedes’ issues with porpoising. He claims that his car doesn’t have adequate downforce compared to Ferrari and Red Bull.

“They’ve got their cars in a much better position, and they’re extracting, maybe not all the downforce, I don’t know, but you’d assume they are extracting a lot more than we are,” Hamilton said.

“Ride quality is probably something that needs to be improved with our car, not only with that bouncing, but it’s in a lot of other places as well.”

Is Mercedes not in contention to win in Bahrain?

In Q3, Mercedes was behind Ferrari and Red Bull by a second. Thus, it would be safe to assume that Mercedes won’t be a contender for the first race.

Though, once the season proceeds forward, we would definitely see a much improved Mercedes. It only remains to be seen whether Mercedes would succeed in solving its issues.

Also read: Lewis Hamilton is moderately satisfied with his performance in Bahrain qualifying

Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
Lewis Hamilton Mercedes

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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