Mercedes chief offers bleak assessment of Lewis Hamilton’s F1 title chances but insists team remain ‘quietly satisfied’
LEWIS HAMILTON has been told Mercedes are on the up, but remain some way short of Red Bull.
Seven-time world champion Hamilton finished P2 at a chaotic Australian Grand Prix to score the team’s first podium of the season.
Team-mate George Russell had also shown strong pace before his car set on fire after engine failure.
And Mercedes technical director James Allison believes there is reason to be optimistic about the performance, with the team now “quietly” believing they are the second best car in the field.
Reflecting on the weekend, Allison said: “Overall, [there is] a sense of quiet satisfaction that we have moved the car forward.
“That, from a performance point of view, we probably got as much as it is able to give right now.
“That happiness, of course, is tempered by the disappointment that we only got one car to the flag and that George was not able to show what he was capable of in the car on race day, having performed very strongly up to that point in the weekend.
“We didn’t have huge breakthroughs, but we moved forward a little bit.
“We put a small amount on the leaders Red Bull, and we are starting to get on terms with, and maybe just nose a whisker in front of, the Ferraris and the Aston Martins.”
Aston Martin currently sit in second in the constructors championship – nine points ahead of Mercedes – after three back-to-back podium finishes for Fernando Alonso.
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However, Red Bull remain the team to beat this year, with Max Verstappen and under-threat Sergio Perez sitting P1 and P2 in the drivers standings after the opening three races.
And Allison is refusing to allow Mercedes to let their guard down, insisting they only got close to Red Bull due to them being “off form”.
He added: “Was [our performance] expected? Broadly yes, because the performance level in Australia was not markedly different to that in the other two tracks so far this year.
“Different yes to Red Bull, but not a completely different animal compared to the rest of the field.
“I think the biggest shift in Australia was that Red Bull were a little bit more off form in qualifying compared to the rest of the grid, and that sort of closed up the field.
“But if you look at the relative pace of our car to the Ferrari, our car to the Aston Martin, it’s been close-ish all year.
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“Yes, we are a little bit on the better side, but it wasn’t seismic.
“So, was it expected? Well, we expected to be in the fight with Ferrari and Aston Martin and pleased to have our noses in front, but we did expect to be there.
“Time will tell [whether performance was track specific]. We’ll go to some more very different tracks in the next few weeks.
“We’ll see whether this was the sort of initial bellwether of general uptick in our performance which we hope for, or whether it was related to the quite unusual track conditions that we saw this weekend in Melbourne.”
In terms of further improvements to the W14, Hamilton and Russell will be forced to wait until May’s Imola Grand Prix.
There are still two races, Azerbaijan and Miami, USA, before the race in Italy rolls around.
In the meantime, Hamilton tried his hand at snowboarding, but ended up going for a freezing bath after falling into some water.