© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
In the post Bahrain Grand Prix Qualifying press conference Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas talked about the reasons for Red Bull’s improved performance.
At the Bahrain Grand Prix Qualifying Red Bull has shown it indeed has a performance advantage over Mercedes. One of the reasons for that are the rule changes introduced in 2021, that favour the high-rake aerodynamic concept pioneered by Red Bull, while it handicaps low-rake cars, which is the concept used by Mercedes.
Asked about this, Lewis Hamilton confirmed he believes the changes were introduced to handicap Mercedes.
“It’s no secret that what the changes [have done], of course they’ve been done to peg us back,” Hamilton explained.
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Hamilton brought up another directive that was introduced in the middle of the 2020 season to try and slow Mercedes down, which is the ban on the use of different engine modes in qualifying and the race. This prevented Mercedes from using its famous “party mode” in qualifying.
“We had the changes of course last year to our engine to do the same thing. But that’s OK, we love a challenge and we don’t look down on these things, we just work hard to do the best we can.
“And that’s what we’ll do,” concluded the Briton.
When Valtteri Bottas was asked about Red Bull’s improved performance, he said there’s not just one thing that makes their car faster, but a combination of improvements.
“Their power unit, chassis, their aero is good,” the Finn said.
“They’ve done a good job over the winter and we need to do a better job.”
