Hamilton and Russell frustrated by 'gremlins' in Bahrain
Optimism had been growing at Mercedes for a strong opening to the 2024 season, only for the team to encounter a number of costly technical glitches during Saturday's Bahrain Grand Prix.
Hamilton reported engine issues and a broken seat as he finished the race in seventh place, while George Russell insisted his battery wasn’t working properly as he finished in fifth.
While by no means unusual for a team in the first race of a brand new season, it was not what Mercedes had been expecting given their usually bullet-proof high reliability standards in previous seasons.
While Russell had been particularly unhappy to miss out on a podium, both drivers insisted that despite the early gremlins there was still a lot to be happy about with the new W15.
“I made a really good start, got into second and I was like ‘here we go’," recalled Russell of the opening laps of today's race. "Then suddenly I had these big red alarms on my steering wheel
“We both faced a similar problem,” Russell told Sky Sports F1. “For whatever reason we had massive engine overheating and the battery wasn’t working properly.
"I had no battery left. I had to turn the power down, we were losing four-tenths a lap in power," he explained. Having moved up to P2 at the start, Russell ended up being overtaken by Sergio Perez, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc.
"It was so difficult holding them off," Russell said. “I was surprised we managed to do it for the first 10 laps or so. We just went backwards thereafter.
“It’s a shame we didn’t get to show any real potential with this car," he sighed, acknowledging that it had been "a bit of a strange day.”
Russell felt that the car needed more cooling, something which should be possible to implement before the next race in Saudi Arabia despite the rapid turnaround.
“It’s nothing to be concerned about,” was his analysis. “All we needed to do was put slightly less bodywork on. It may have cost us a quarter of a tenth but we wouldn’t have to lose four-tenths with the engine.
“Our forecast of the conditions were incorrect so we need to go around that loop," he added. "It ultimately cost us a lot."
That said, Russell was quick to admit that a win was never on the cards with Max Verstappen and Red Bull proving so far ahead of the field. " Maybe we could have fought for P3 or given them a fight slightly earlier on," he offered.
Meanwhile Lewis Hamilton started the day's race from ninth on the grid and advanced only slightly to P7 by the finish, with his own set of issues to report.
“For a while my battery was dead," Hamilton complained. "Down the straights I was just de-rating the whole way down the straights, so I lost a lot of ground to the McLarens.
“I was fixing that out and that took a good 10 laps and I lost 15 seconds through that," he continued. "After that I was just trying to get back on it and catch up.
"Once we got that fixed there was a bit of overheating with the brakes and in general the performance was so-so," he noted. “My seat started moving - it clicked and my left side dropped so it was moving through the braking zones.
"Not great," he summarised, before adding that there had also been plenty of positive things on offer today for Mercedes.
"I feel good, I don't feel downbeat. It was a super-average race," he suggested. "I was catching at the end and feeling racy, but the gap was so big and I'd lost so much at the beginning of the race.
"We have a platform that we can start adding bricks to," he said. "The last couple of years, we've had all these problems and spent several races trying to undo all those problems, trying to figure out what those problems were as opposed to now.
"Now it's a building process from here, and I think we're a great team."
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