Hamilton urges Mercedes to match rivals’ “amazing performance” as soon as possible

2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

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Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes must make progress with their car quickly after seeing the performance of their rivals in Bahrain.

After finishing on the podium in Bahrain after the late retirement of the two Red Bull drivers, Hamilton said they cannot rely on the same happening again.

“I don’t currently feel too stressed but I want to get in the fight as soon as possible,” said Hamilton in response to a question from RaceFans. “The last race was obviously an amazing feeling for us given where we thought we were going to be to come out with the result we did. But we can’t rely every weekend on that to happen so we need to do move forwards as fast as we can.”

Hamilton said he is “realistic” about the challenge the team faces having started the season six-tenths of as second off the pace. “We have issues, we’re fighting to fix them.

“I think there’s a lot of potential within our car and we’re just trying to work as hard as we can to rectify them as quick as possible.

“We’ve seen the amazing performance of some of the other teams, how close it is between all of us so I’m hopeful that we will improve. I have no doubt that I’ve got the best group of people behind me in order to come up with solutions and fix it and extract performance.”

Jeddah Corniche Circuit, which holds this weekend’s race, is a faster and smoother layout than last week’s venue, and may produce a change in the competitive order. Mercedes have experienced particularly severe problems with their car ‘porpoising’ at high speed.

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“It shouldn’t be as bumpy as Bahrain,” said Hamilton. “Bahrain’s obviously a much older circuit, it’s got more character to it because it is as old as it is.

“This track is super-fast but a different surface, it will behave with the tyres differently. These long straights might not be too much fun with the bouncing if we still have it. Those that have the bouncing are in the same boat, hopefully we’ll try and fix some of it.”

Mercedes have been hard at work to solve their problems since the last race. “A huge amount of work has gone on in the past three days,” said Hamilton. “I’m very proud of my team for just keeping their heads down, staying focussed, turning to the crazy amounts of data that there is every time we’re basically out in the car and just trying to understand what the issues we have.

“We are aware of the problems we have, but in terms of what’s causing it [we’re] just working through trying to figure that out and how we can rectify it without losing performance and ultimately gain performance. But three days is such a short time between races, there’s not a huge difference here this weekend.

“Hopefully we’ll have some things to try. And from a driver’s perspective that’s exciting coming to today when we get into the car, for example, just trying something new and hoping that it unlocks a bit of performance.”

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2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

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Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...
Claire Cottingham
Claire has worked in motorsport for much of her career, covering a broad mix of championships including Formula One, Formula E, the BTCC, British...

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12 comments on “Hamilton urges Mercedes to match rivals’ “amazing performance” as soon as possible”

  1. Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
    25th March 2022, 12:57

    I was going to say something sarcastic about thank god Lewis has urged them to improve ASAP as if they didn’t already know that. But reading the article it in no way matches the headline. His statement is positive, diplomatic and a fair assessment of the situation which at no point says anything about urging his team to improve ASAP.

    1. @rdotquestionmark yes – it would seem as if the headline was some sort of bait?

      1. I disagree.

        “The last race was obviously an amazing feeling for us given where we thought we were going to be to come out with the result we did. But we can’t rely every weekend on that to happen so we need to do move forwards as fast as we can.”

        For sure LH is being positive, diplomatic, and is giving a fair assessment of the situation, and within that he is obviously urging the whole team, and I’m sure he includes himself in there, to improve ASAP. I mean, it kind of goes without saying anyway, no? They can’t dilly dally or obviously RBR and Ferrari are going to create too big a gap for LH/Mercedes to make up for unless they literally leap ahead of Ferrari and RBR and become dominant. If they take 1/3rd to mid season to just match the top two, that won’t be enough. And the top two aren’t sitting on their hands either.

        Nothing wrong with the title of this article.

        1. Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
          25th March 2022, 17:48

          At no point in any of Lewis’s comments has he applied direct urgency to his team to match his rivals.

  2. Mclaren said after Bahrain that their weakness are slow corners and for Alfa Romeo they are fast ones. So could we see Mclaren in Q2/1 and Alfa out in Q3/Q2

  3. Go Lewis go

  4. I thought it was’t a matter of car …

    1. The Mercedes is problably somewhere around 7th fastest car in reality. Lucky they got Hamilton though.

      1. it is as much matter of car as the driver. without a good car, driver cant make a magic. without a good driver car cant do magic. people who dis ham are usually the ones stating its only car when it is ham, but max is a god making the difference. i guess it is not anymore, it is only the car with the redbul now, not so much max. even lec is comfortably ahead of redbuls – the rocket ships

    2. it is as much matter of car as the driver. without a good car, driver cant make a magic. without a good driver car cant do magic. however lots of ham (mostly) hating fans side with the car only, indicating non stop that driver is useless. well alonso? hello? vettel hello? now it must be max and lec making the difference in speeds in car i guess, that is usually the case with ham/merc haters’ thoughts

  5. Didn’t he say at the team’s launch that “my team doesn’t make mistakes”?

    1. @bakano I suppose those defending LH/Mercedes, and perhaps even they themselves would say they haven’t made a mistake, they just haven’t learned everything about the car yet;)

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