Lewis Hamilton has said fans will be surprised this year if they think the team is talking themselves down amid pre-season struggles.
Mercedes are well known for putting on a show, only to then turn up and dominate the grid on race day, but Hamilton said ‘it’s different’ this year as the team continues to meet hurdles in Bahrain.
The first race of the season is just one week away, and so we will soon see the true capabilities of each team’s new machinery in line with sweeping regulation changes.
Speaking today, the seven-time world champion said: “At the moment I don’t think we’ll be competing for wins, but there is potential within our car to get us there.
“We’ve just got to learn to be able to extract it and fix some of the problems, which is what we’re working on.
“We have some hurdles to overcome and obviously next week we’ll get a much better showing of our pace, but I think people will be surprised, maybe, because people keep talking about whether we’re talking ourselves down or not, but it’s a bit different this year.”
When asked about whether or not they’re talking themselves down, Hamilton insisted: “It feels a lot different. It’s not as good. It’s not going to look as good as it did last year.
“I think we have far bigger challenges this time and they’re not one-week turnarounds, I think they’ll take a little bit longer, but from what I’m told, we have a significant amount of pace to find.”
