Lewis Hamilton

If Formula 1 awarded points based on how strenuously a team denies it has a fast car, Mercedes would already be well on the way to the 2022 championship.

The better the team comes to understand its package, the more downforce it’ll be able to use and the faster it’ll become relative to Red Bull Racing. Consider also that there were well-founded suspicions up and down the paddock that Mercedes was running its engine turned well down. Progress was slow, but it was evident, and by the end of the final day the lap times made clear that Mercedes had wrapped its head around the aero kit and was ready to compete. Some teams resorted to attaching stays — essentially big staples — to the floor to prevent it from flexing and creating peak downforce at speed. The car suddenly loses its downforce and bounces up on its suspension, at which point the floor starts creating downforce again and sucks itself down towards the surface, and it repeats as such. Fundamentally it created a car imbalance, which the team was able to rectify well enough to win three of the first four races, including taking three of four pole positions. Resultantly its lap times were way off — even if testing lap times aren’t everything — with George Russell not even within a second of Max Verstappen’s blistering final time. The signs of progress this year haven’t been nearly as strong as they were in 2019. References to last year’s Mercedes struggles have been widespread, but this year and last aren’t really the same. It’s the phenomenon whereby at speed the car is so heavily loaded with downforce that it kisses the track surface, at which point the aerodynamic floor stalls. “Where we are compared to the rest, I don’t know. “Obviously [in Bahrain] we will get a much better showing of our pace, but I think people will be surprised.