Hamilton encouraged by ‘fantastic’ Mercedes after Bahrain qualifying

SAKHIR, Bahrain — Lewis Hamilton was disappointed with his own effort in qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix but encouraged by the fact the session appeared to confirm the step Mercedes has made for 2024.

Hamilton will start Saturday night’s race from ninth but teammate George Russell qualified third, 0.3s behind overwhelming championship favourite Max Verstappen.

Hamilton, starting his final season with Mercedes before moving to Ferrari in 2025, was buoyed by the performance of his new car.

“Oh yeah, the car is really fantastic, it is a real big improvement from the previous years,” Hamilton said on Friday evening.

“A lot more stable, a lot more fun to drive but we still have work to do as you can see. But for George to be three tenths off Max, it’s incredible.”

Hamilton has not won a race since November 2021 but sounded optimistic Mercedes’ new car could eventually end up in the mix this year.

He added: “[I’m] a lot more excited. For the first qualifying session to be as poor as that, so much preparation went in to today and then it didn’t go the way… But that’s racing. But in terms of season for sure. To know that we have a package that we can potentially fight with is really pleasing.”

Specifically on Russell’s qualifying effort, Hamilton said: “It shows what’s possible, yeah. And I think we just got to really continue to add performance. If that’s our platform from here, we can chase through the rest of the season.”

Hamilton has never shied away from aggressive set-up changes in the build-up to F1 races and the seven-time champion admitted he had gone a different direction to Russell after Friday’s two practice sessions.

“Yesterday George and I were identical car set-ups and the car was feeling great and then we veered off. He went one way and I went the other. You could say the one I was on was not good on a single lap. I hope that it’s good in the race.”

Hamilton said he pushed for the change after conducting Friday’s longer runs, effectively the team’s best data for what the race might look like.

“I wasn’t comfortable with my race pace and so I changed the car to hopefully make the race pace better. We’ll see tomorrow if that really is the case but trying to find a good balance for the race pace.”