© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Toto Wolff says Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas “outperformed the car”, while Lewis explains how he “struggled through the whole of qualifying”.
Mercedes managed to lock out the front row at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix Qualifying, but team boss Toto Wolff says the cars “clearly weren’t quick enough today”.
“Probably the drivers outperformed the car, and Max would have been on pole by I guess almost half a second,” the Austrian said.
“So this is something which we need to analyse, because it’s not what we expected. Max crashing out obviously, the last lap, puts us in a more fortunate situation with one and two on the grid.
“But this is for today, and I think we can deem ourselves fortunate by that situation. The race is a totally different game again.”
Ahead of the inaugural Saudi Arabian GP weekend, Mercedes was said to be the favourites, but Wolff admits he was surprised “that we didn’t have the pace on the straights today, or overall this weekend”.
“I think we are pretty equal on the straights. But we’ve been losing in the high-speed [corners], but also in qualifying, in some of the low-speed, the drivers were not at all happy with the car.
“It’s between understeering, snapping, jacking, rolling, you name it,” concluded Mercedes’ team boss.
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At the post-quali press conference Hamilton explained how he struggled with the car.
“Generally just struggled through the whole of qualifying,” the Briton said in the post-quali press conference.
“Through Q1, really struggling to pull out the laps, get the grip from the tyres, which was something that we haven’t necessarily struggled with all weekend but way, way worse in quali, and yeah, just get my head around the fact that we were generally off.
“I was off. I was even behind Valtteri. So just kind of consolidating my thoughts and how I approached things and each corner and just trying to maximise.
“I can’t tell you how much of a knife-edge it was. The car was… I was struggling with the car and so, at the end, I think the first lap, the first run was so-so.
“I just struggled with a lot of snaps. I had that big snap in Turn Eight, and then that last lap, it was just all or nothing.
“So, but still, not as quick as I would have hoped to have had but it was the best that I could do,” concluded the seven-time champion.
