© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
After the Bahrain Grand Prix Free Practice 1 and 2, Lewis Hamilton says Red Bull is “a long, long way ahead” of Mercedes right now.
After finishing Friday’s first and second free practice in P7 and P9 respectively, Lewis Hamilton was not very optimistic about the current state of Mercedes’ car.
“We’ve had small problems in the past, relatively [small], compared to this year we’ve had much, much smaller problems,” Hamilton said.
“We’re faced with much, much bigger problems this year and everything we do to try and fix it doesn’t really change that. It appears that it’s probably going to be a more longer-term fix.
“We’re not going to be in the race for the win here. If you look at the Red Bulls, they’re a long, long way ahead. It’s in the region of eight to nine-tenths ahead of us.
“Ferrari is probably something like half a second to six-tenths ahead of us. We’re fighting with whoever’s behind them.”
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During FP2 Lewis complained his car was “pulling”, which means his steering wheel was pulling down to one side while braking, due to the front brake discs operating at different temperatures.
However, after the session he said this wasn’t a big issue.
“The braking thing is something we can fix, it’s not a concern. It’s more the balance that we have and the loss of downforce we seem to have compared to others, it’s making it much, much harder out there.
“As you can see, we’re a long way off, we’re not bluffing like people assumed we are. It is what it is, we’ll work as hard as we can.
“We can’t really do anything, this is the car. We can try improve the set-up, but it’s not the set-up that’s the issue,” Hamilton concluded.
