Mercedes considered a long delay in reality for the Bahrain season opener on Friday and seven-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton and new teammate George Russell see no quick solution.
Hamilton is ninth in second session at Sakhir, with Russell the fourth. The pair finished seventh and fourth in opening practice, respectively.
Red Bull’s world champion Max Verstappen topped the timesheet with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz in second and third in the second set.
“It’s all about runtime and we’re definitely not where we want to be,” Russell said. “I think we’ve made a bit of progress in solving some of the issues, but the current pace isn’t there yet.
“We’re both struggling a little bit with the car and we’re far from catching up to the pace of Red Bull, Ferrari, even AlphaTauri. Alfa Romeo seems to be catching up to our pace or even our pace. even faster, so we had a bit of work to do.
“We’re really throwing everything at it at the moment to try and unlock the potential that we thought we had. But we’re really struggling to tap into it and everything we’ve been trying to possibly be is it,” he said. One step forward and two steps back.
“It’s going to take time. We’re all hoping to get it sorted out by the end of the week but how things are going at the moment, we’re not insiders.”
Hamilton said the problems Mercedes has experienced in the past at the start of a season are minor compared to what has happened.
“Everything we did to try and fix it didn’t really change that,” he said. “Looks like it’s going to be a longer-term fix, so nothing short-term.”
Mercedes’ track technical director Andrew Shovlin told Sky Sports that the team, who have won constructors titles for the past eight years, needed to unlock real performance.
“On the singles lap we’ve got (on one) softer tires a step forward with the cars we want to compete against at similar times, so obviously there’s something to do there.. . felt like we had a basis for catching up,” he said.
