Mercedes struggled for pace throughout the second pre-season test in Bahrain last week as the ongoing porpoising issue prevented it from unlocking more performance from its raft of updates.
Qualifying in Bahrain saw Hamilton finish fifth, trailing pole-sitter Charles Leclerc by over six tenths of a second as both Ferrari and Red Bull cars qualified ahead. Mercedes teammate George Russell will start down in ninth after struggling with tyre warm-up in Q3.
Hamilton said immediately after the session that he felt happy to qualify fifth given how much Mercedes had been struggling.
The seven-time world champion later explained that Mercedes was working hard to try and get the most out of the car, but acknowledged the limitations stemming from the porpoising problem meant no set-up tweak could remedy things.
“There’s been a crazy amount of work and conversations here until late, working on just trying to just extract everything amongst the fact that we still have the fundamental…
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