"It was like I was in a different category when I was going through the high-speed between the other guys around me," admitted Lewis Hamilton after Mercedes finished 40secs behind Red Bull in sixth and ninth positions in Jeddah despite major changes to their car for 2024
Saturday 9 March 2024 23:35, UK
Lewis Hamilton believes Mercedes have still got to make "big changes" to their F1 car beyond the widespread overhaul already made for 2024 after a difficult start to the new season continued at the Saudi Arabian GP.
With Toto Wolff admitting at the end of last season that Mercedes faced a "mountain to climb" in their pursuit of Red Bull in the short-term, all of the world champions' rivals have faced a harsh reminder of the scale of that task in the opening two weekends of the new season following consecutive dominant Max Verstappen-Sergio Perez one-two finishes.
Mercedes, who have made significant changes to their car for 2024 in an attempt to bridge that gap, followed up fifth and seventh places at the Bahrain season-opener with sixth and ninth on Saturday in Saudi Arabia.
Sixth-placed George Russell finished 40 seconds behind victor Verstappen in a 50-lap race that featured a brief early appearance from the Safety Car.
Hamilton, who ran behind Russell in the opening stages before trying an alternative longer-running strategy and eventually finished ninth, admitted the performance of the new W15 around the high-speed Jeddah street track had felt familiar after similar difficulties in 2023 and 2022.
"The car is relatively good in the low speed and not so bad in the medium [speed], but in the high-speed we are miles off," said Hamilton to Sky Sports F1.
"It was like I was in a different category when I was going through the high-speed between the other guys around me.
"It's frustrating for sure to be in three years in a row in almost the same position. It's definitely tough but we will get our heads down and keep working away, and I know everyone back at the factory is pushing as hard as they can."
Mercedes have changed direction with their approach to the current ground-effect cars for this year, describing the W15 at its February unveiling as a "complete relaunch", but Hamilton suggested they may not have gone far enough.
"We've definitely got to make some big changes," added the seven-time champion.
"We haven't made big enough changes, perhaps. If you look at the three teams ahead of us, they still have different concept to where we are in some areas.
"So we've got some performance to add, that's for sure."
Running behind Russell in his grid position of eighth at the time of Lance Stroll's crash and the lap-seven Safety Car, Hamilton was one of a handful of drivers not to pit during the three laps in which the race was neutralised.
This left him up in running third for the lap-11 restart and, although he was soon passed by Perez and Charles Leclerc, Hamilton impressively stayed ahead of Oscar Piastri for 20 laps despite the McLaren having the advantage of fresher tyres.
He eventually pitted on lap 36 to set up a final short stint on soft tyres but, with Lando Norris just ahead of him on the same strategy and impressive Ferrari debutant Oliver Bearman ultimately out of reach for both of them, Hamilton could not make up any late ground.
Nonetheless, he had no regrets, saying: "I think it was worth trying something different.
"Splitting the cars and trying different strategies, and ultimately that's always the goal to do something a little bit different, particularly when we're in the position we're in.
"I was fighting as hard as I could to go long and I was hoping for a Safety Car or something but it was just unfortunate nothing came out."
Finishes of seventh and ninth represent Hamilton's worst start to a season in points terms since 2009 and he added to the written media: "I wouldn't say I'm having fun. I'm racing for ninth, or finishing ninth is definitely not fun. I am enjoying the actual racing part.
"I was hunting and I was pushing as hard as I could, I was maximising everything I had with the car, I was right on the edge, it was just unfortunately really lacking performance in the high speed where they were walking all over us. "
Speaking to reporters after the race, Mercedes boss Wolff said the team believed there was inherent high-speed cornering performance to find in the W15 but that they were still working out how to unlock it through set-up.
"I think there's a bigger factor with lacking high-speed than just the rear wing [settings]," said the Mercedes team principal.
"We are missing downforce beyond the steps that you would have with a bigger rear wing. We tried it on Lewis [in Thursday practice].
"There is something which we don't understand. We are quick everywhere else pretty much. We know that we have a smaller rear wing, we are compensating what we are losing through the corners, but it's just the high-speed variant where we are losing all the lap time.
"There is only so much you can tune here. Our simulations point us in a direction, and this is the kind of set-up range that we then choose. You put the right rear wing on and I think you gain a few tenths or not if you get the set-up right or wrong but there's not a massive corridor of performance.
"It's more a fundamental thing that we believe that the speed should be there, and we measure the downforce but we don't find it on the lap time."
With a two-week gap to the next race in Australia, Wolff added: "That's been two years that there is something which we need to spot and that's the thing to unlock.
"It's not by lack of trying - we push so hard and we're going to give it a massive, massive go now in the next week with more data to understand and come back to Melbourne stronger.
"We're on a mission with this one and I'm 100 per cent sure we're going to unlock that performance gap."
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