Mercedes was left wondering if its long-awaited upgrade is a step forwards or backwards after Kimi Antonelli and George Russell struggled to fourth and eighth in qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.
Championship leaders Mercedes bought the new package to Sepang but did not find themselves to be the dominant benchmark they have set at most venues.
Qualifying saw Red Bull’s Max Verstappen take pole ahead of Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton -- Antonelli will climb to third on the grid, with Verstappen’s teammate Isack Hadjar set to serve a grid penalty.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said the new package seemed to be making the car behave very differently.
“Very difficult to understand,” Wolff told Sky Sports after qualifying. “It looks like we are very draggy because it’s the first time that we’re losing a lot of time on the straights to especially Max. And then through the low speed, we are not able to turn the car. There’s just too much understeer. So overall things we haven’t seen all year.”
Mercedes had looked to be in decent shape through practice. When it was suggested on Sky Sports that Mercedes’ rivals held something back in practice and turned up the wick in qualifying, Wolff disagreed.
“No, something else is going on,” Wolff said. “Something else is going on. And we have to understand ... This is [about] working through the data and putting our heads together because we still believe that the upgrade works. We just need to understand why not here.”
Russell, who claimed pole position and victory a week ago in Baku, said the qualifying result might be misleading.
“All the numbers say it’s an improvement, but obviously it’s a sport that we need to follow the lap times and not what the numbers say,” Russell said. “So, the numbers look absolutely fine and in line with expectations. However, the result wasn’t good.”
Asked if he could be sure it was a step forward or whether the struggles were track specific, Russell, who took pole position and victory a week ago in Baku, answered: “That is the big question mark.
“You know, if you could have done a direct back-to-back it would have been great to know, but that’s the challenge of this sport.
“If I’d put the upgrade package on last week, even if it was worse, we probably still would have been on pole. And we’d have been saying it was fantastic. And equally, if we had the old car here, maybe the result would have been even worse.
“So, that’s the challenge. As a team we have yet to have, let’s say, a bad race this whole season and this was clearly a very bad qualifying.”
Antonelli, who leads teammate Russell by 66 points in the drivers’ championship, said the upgraded car was puzzling.
“I think with this new package obviously the window of the way the car operates is different, so I think we’re trying to understand in which window the car performance is best, in high speed corner and low speed corner I think,” Antonelli said
“Our high speed performance has been very strong this weekend, we were very quick in high speed, but in the low speed where we lacked, so I think overall we need to understand why and try to go on and improve.”
Despite being puzzled over the upgrade, Antonelli felt Sepang might be giving a misleading picture.
“It’s really hard to understand, but we’ll try to do our best, and probably Singapore [next week] will give us a better read on the package,” Antonelli added. “Given how much more of a play for tomorrow goes here, it’s all about tyre deg, and especially protecting the rear axle, so qualifying doesn’t need to say everything.”
Despite the confusing debut for the upgrade, Antonelli hinted that his main focus from Sunday’s race will be on consolidating his championship lead.
“Race pace is even more important,” he said. “I think we have a good opportunity tomorrow, starting on the clean side, I think it’s going to be very important, and we’ll try to manage to start the best way as possible, and then try to, you know, if we can fight for the win, great. If we have to settle for P3, P4, we’ll take that.
“It’s a race where we will attack.”
