© Finn Pomeroy for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes is “not the quickest at the moment”, but believes the car has the potential to improve, however it’ll “take a little bit longer”.
After his final test session behind the wheel of the W13, Lewis Hamilton says the car is definitely not among the quickest yet.
“I’m sure everyone can figure it out, we’re not the quickest at the moment,” the Briton said.
“Ferrari looks to be the quickest and perhaps Red Bull, and then maybe us or McLaren. I don’t know, but we’re certainly not at the top.”
Mercedes faced some difficulties in testing in 2021 as well, but later went on to win the first race of the season. Lewis says this year is a different story.
“I don’t think it’s going to look as it did last year with the difficult session we had in practice and then [the] switch over into the race.
“I think we have far bigger challenges this time and there not one-week turnarounds, they’ll take a little bit longer. But from what I’m told, we have a considerable amount of pace to find.”
Lewis was also asked if he thinks Mercedes will be able to challenge for the title in 2022.
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“Obviously it’s a little bit too early to get into that, or have those kind of thoughts, but at the moment I don’t think we’ll be competing for wins.
“But there is potential within our car to get us there, we’ve just got to learn to extract it and fix some of the problems.
“That’s what we are working on and everyone is doing an incredible job back at the factory working as hard as they can, but we have some hurdles to overcome.
“Obviously next week we’ll get a much better showing of our pace but I think people will be surprised maybe.
“People keep saying that we keep talking ourselves down but it’s a bit different this year.”
One of the problems Mercedes is facing is ‘porpoising’, and Hamilton hopes the team will manage to solve it.
“At the moment that is one of our weaknesses. Other people are also experiencing it and it’s not great.
“It’s definitely a hindrance at the moment but I hope somehow we are able to fix these things so we can realise the true potential of these cars,” he concluded.
