Lewis Hamilton Admits That Mercedes ‘Need to Improve’ After Pre-Season Struggles

Seven-time Formula One World Champion, Lewis Hamilton has admitted that Mercedes needs to improve after a difficult 2021 pre-season test. 

Speaking after the final day of testing yesterday (14 March), Hamilton felt that there is progress to be made across all areas of the W12 after posting only the fifth fastest overall time despite making improvements in his final test session, as he said: “I can’t pick out any one area, it just feels globally through the lap that we need to improve.”

Hamilton also spoke of wishing that he had ‘more days’ of testing this year given the car’s issues after pre-season was cut down to three days from the previous six to eight days in recent seasons.

Valtteri Bottas meanwhile endured gearbox issues which curtailed his running on the opening day after just six laps, before recovering to top Saturday’s test which was only ninth fastest overall across all three days.

Despite days two and three seeing ‘efficient and clean’ running for Bottas, he however still isn’t entirely happy, commenting: “I’m still not entirely comfortable but we’ve been moving forward and getting better.”

Bottas though believes that the team will be faster come the season opener in Bahrain from 26-28 March following data analysis, saying: “There’s still more work to do; we’ve collected lots of data over these past few days which we will analyse to help us make the car faster ahead of the first race.”

Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director, Andrew Shovlin meanwhile is pleased to see reliability improve across all three days of running whilst balance on higher fuel runs was more ‘predictable’ despite race pace being of worry compared to Red Bull who dominated all three days.

Shovlin also spoke of his concern at their low fuel pace which didn’t make much gain on their high fuel running, saying: “The lower fuel work was a more confusing picture, we didn’t gain enough and we need to go and look at our approach as far too many cars were ahead of us on pace today.”

The 47 year-old also confessed that Mercedes might not be able to recover from their pre-season woes unlike previous seasons, saying: “We’ve had issues in recent years with pace in winter testing and managed to make good progress before the first race but we may have our work cut out this time.”