Hamilton shocked by pace, Verstappen unfazed

Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes’ one-lap pace in practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix came as a shock, but Max Verstappen remains confident in his Red Bull’s long-run performance.

Mercedes secured a one-two in FP2 on Thursday evening, topping the times in the only representative session ahead of qualifying. Hamilton’s best lap was 0.2s faster than teammate George Russell and nearly half a second clear of Verstappen in sixth, but the Mercedes driver isn’t getting carried away despite the surprising headline times.

“Yeah, this has been a crazy (day) — I was late this morning…” he said. “P1, we were surprised. It was very, very windy this morning, so it was a really difficult session I think for everyone — the track was so different compared to practice last week. Otherwise it was feeling OK, but we didn’t really know where we stood on the C2 tire.

“Then in this session, we made some improvements over the session. Again I don’t really understand — it’s a shock to see us where we are. We’ll take it for now but we can’t get ahead of ourselves — we need to keep our heads down, keep working on the setup and try to extract more. I think our long-run pace is nowhere near the Red Bulls, for example, and I think we were a lot closer, so we’ve got some work to do there.”

Hamilton does think Mercedes can improve its long-run pace too, but isn’t sure how the new car will react to certain changes to achieve his aims.

“I do, (but) in terms of achieving that I don’t know how with the new car. With a new car you have all-new tools, everything’s been completely redesigned. All the previous numbers and names for things have completely shifted so you’re learning a whole new vocabulary when it comes to the car setup.

“We’ve tested some of them but not all of them because we only had a day and a half. We’ll have to see — I hope that we can make a step. I’ve got a bit of an idea but I don’t know how to achieve that yet currently with the setup changes without affecting the other side of things — single lap, lightweight — so we’ll see.”

Verstappen was not concerned by the gap to Mercedes as he suggests Hamilton and Russell ran more aggressive engine modes than Red Bull during practice.

“It was not too bad — I think it is very close,” Verstappen said. “Maybe some people around us turned up the engine a bit in terms of top speed. But we just focus on ourselves and I think from today there were a few little balance issues from front to rear, but nothing big.

“It’s just about trying to find that sweet spot, and especially around here with the rough tarmac, once you get it into that sweet spot you just pick up time and that’s what we’ll try to focus on a little more for tomorrow.

“I mean, I don’t say everyone around us did , but a few did. So I’m not too worried about the gap to P1, for example, but it’s going to be very close I think in qualifying, so that’s going to be very nice. The long run, I was a bit happier about that, but again also there are a few little things that we can do better.”