In the second free practice session on Thursday evening, which took place in conditions similar to those of qualifying and the Sakhir race, Lewis Hamilton led a Mercedes one-two ahead of teammate George Russell, with Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin in third position.
The favorite Max Verstappen instead placed sixth, with Red Bull seeming to have placed greater emphasis on work aimed at long runs.
While Russell admitted that Mercedes' progress since testing “exceeded expectations”, he said the team is not “getting it in its head” about its times, as it believes Red Bull is still superior in terms of race pace.
“We're not getting our heads around it. The pace in qualifying looked really strong, but we still need to understand why it was so good,” Russell said. “We made some changes from the test and the result was better than expected. But in the end it's the pace on the long run that counts and Max is still ahead of us.”
“As regards the race pace, we are very satisfied with the day, the car is behaving very well, but we won't let ourselves be 'carried away' by the time table.”
Mercedes' flying lap speed offers a glimmer of hope that Red Bull is not “far away”, as Hamilton said last week.
George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
“I hope so,” Russell replied when asked if Mercedes are now much stronger in qualifying set-up than last week. “We need to sit down and understand where this increase in performance comes from, whether it is an isolated case, whether we can maintain it and what we need to do to fight for an important position on Sunday.”
“After the tests Max seemed very ahead, now the gap has narrowed, but he's still ahead. I think he still has a good margin over the others. So, it absolutely doesn't mean we're back or that we can fight with them.”
Russell had a moment of difficulty at Turn 11 at the start of the session, when a long trail of sparks streaked from his Mercedes, but he explained that the problem was caused by a setup error and was quickly resolved.
“We had a problem,” he said. “We made a small setup error, we were too low to the bottom. I don't know if you saw all the sparks, but there was something not right.”
“I went into turn 1 and had a lockup, but at turn 11 the car was bouncing. When we saw the data we realized it, so we made a change and fixed it for the next run.”
“We are still learning this car, for me and Lewis, for the engineers and the mechanics it is new. These things happen.”
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