Lewis Hamilton and his Mercedes F1 team have not been up to the mark in the season’s first two races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia
Lewis Hamilton had a horrible start to the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in Jeddah. He was knocked out in the very first round of qualifying – the first time since 2017. Hamilton started the race in his P15 grid slot but could only manage a 10th placed finish earning one point. This is not the start the 7-time world champion was expecting going into the 2022 F1 season.
Mercedes have had a tough start as a team. They have won the last eight constructors’ championships in Formula 1. The indifferent start to the 2022 season comes as a shock and surprise to the team and the F1 community in general. Mercedes are in second place in the constructors’ championship with 38 points, a significant margin (of 40 points) behind the leaders Ferrari who has 78 points in their kitty. The F1 season has just started and there will be a lot of scope for recovery but this is certainly not the start that the team was hoping for.
Speaking on the rough start to the season, Hamilton said, “The learnings are there that we are quite a bit off pace-wise and have got a lot of work to do. You always want to take the positives from a difficult situation but we’re not here to settle for that. We can’t walk away being pleased with that.”
Lewis Hamilton had earlier said after pre-season that his Mercedes team have work to do going into the new season. After the pre-season running in Bahrain, Hamilton stated that he believes his team is not ready to challenge for the championship right from the start. Speaking to the media, Hamilton said, “It’s too early to have those kind of thoughts about the World Championship, but at the moment I don’t think we will be competing for wins.”
Hamilton claimed that Red Bull and Ferrari are in the best shape going into the new season with McLaren being very impressive as well. “We are not the quickest at the moment. I think Ferrari look to be the quickest and perhaps Red Bull and then maybe us or McLaren – but we’re currently not at the top”, he said. The Brit further added, “There is potential within our car to get us to the top. We’ve just got to learn to be able to extract it and fix some of the problems, which is what we are working on.”
Can Mercedes turn things around in the Australian Grand Prix? We will have the answers in two weeks’ time.
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