Lewis Hamilton qualified 3rd on Saturday, with a gap of 3 tenths to the pole sitter, Charles Leclerc. However, the defending world champion believes that Ferrari can still be outperformed during the race.
“Yesterday was a struggle,” commented Lewis Hamilton. “All weekend, we’ve seen incredible pace form Ferrari, and I didn’t know we would be as close as we were.
“I made changes to the car overnight, so I’m hopeful the car is in a better position.
"It’s why I‘m bit more upbeat”
“Now we are in a better position… Tomorrow’s the more important day and it will be interesting to see how we do.
"We’re going to give them a good fight, that’s for sure… They’ve showed incredible pace but it doesn’t mean they can’t be beat.
"We’re going [to] work on it, keep our heads down and see what happens.”
Hamilton although, stressed that the team had made some significant progress overnight, after his gap of 7 tenths to Leclerc in FP2 was slashed down to just 3 tenths in Qualifying.
He said: "Great work over night from the team and am happy with the progress we made."
"However, we have work to do so we will keep our heads down.
Ferrari kept an upper hand over Mercedes throughout the three practice sessions as well as the three Qualifying rounds. Mercedes finished a remarkable 1-2 in Melbourne, with Valtteri Bottas winning the race in a dominant fashion. The two Ferraris of Vettel and Leclerc finished 4th and 5th respectively in a distance.
It was expected of Mercedes to carry on the same degree of performance in Bahrain as well, but Ferrari turned around the tables in their favor, as both the Scuderia drivers locked out the front row.
While Hamilton seemed optimistic of tomorrow's race, his team boss wasn't as much. Toto Wolff added: “It’s a bit of a disappointment because it’s a gap and we need to analyse where that comes from,”
“On long runs [on Friday], we were doing okay, I think that looked good. But we are lacking in straight-line speed at the moment.
"Whether that’s the track or power, we need to analyse"
"Obviously that’s not great for a race either; overtaking will be an option for tomorrow, but you need to have a fast car on the straight.”
Comments