Russell demonstrated the potential of the new W15 by qualifying third in the first race of the season in Bahrain, while Hamilton was unable to do better than ninth after the changes he made to the set-up didn't work as well as he would have hoped on the flying lap.
However, the seven-time world champion remains optimistic about the potential of his W15 for Saturday night's race.
“A very, very difficult qualifying session,” Hamilton said. “It's incredible to see how close everyone is. I think George's position is a real testament to how amazing the work everyone at the factory has done, which has finally given us a car we can fight with.”
“Today I wasn't able to take advantage of it when I made that set-up change. I put something on the car that we hadn't put in the last two years. I hoped it would go well, but unfortunately the car wasn't nice to drive in qualifying conditions” .
When Motorsport.com asked him how excited he is compared to 12 months ago, when it was immediately quite clear that the W14 wasn't the step up he had hoped for compared to the W13, Hamilton admitted that the qualifying result was frustrating considering what it is the potential of the W15.
“I mean, right now…!” he said. “The first qualifying session was so poor… we prepared so much today, and then it didn't go the way it should have. But that's racing. In terms of the season though, for sure, knowing that we have a package with that we can potentially fight is really nice.”
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes-AMG F1 Team, is interviewed after Qualifying
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
Hamilton is convinced that the car represents a good starting point for the rest of the season. “The car is really fantastic,” he said. “It's really a big improvement over previous years. It's much more stable and fun to drive.”
“We still have work to do, as you can see, but for George to be within three tenths of Red Bull – or Max – is incredible. It shows what's possible. And I think we just need to keep increasing the performance. And if this it's our platform from here on out, we can definitely have fun for the rest of the season.”
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said the team has taken a different approach this season.
“We kind of got rid of the mentality that we've won eight times, and asked ourselves: why don't we do it now?” the Austrian said. “We're simply the underdogs, we've been wrong two years in a row.”
“And now we have a car that's better suited to us. We'll try to build everything from here and I'm sure this will happen.”
#Hamilton #smiles #Finally #fight #W15
