Hamilton encouraged by ‘fantastic’ Mercedes after Bahrain qualifying

SAKHIR, Bahrain — Lewis Hamilton was disappointed with his own qualifying efforts for the Bahrain Grand Prix, but encouraged that the session appeared to confirm Mercedes' step forward for 2024.

Hamilton will start Saturday night's race from ninth, but teammate George Russell qualified third, 0.3 seconds behind championship favorite Max Verstappen.

Hamilton, who enters his final season with Mercedes before joining Ferrari in 2025, has been buoyed by the performance of his new car.

“Oh yeah, the car is really fantastic, it’s a real big improvement on previous years,” Hamilton said on Friday evening.

“A lot more stable, a lot more fun to drive but we still have work to do as you can see. But for George to be three tenths behind Max is incredible.”

Hamilton hasn't won a race since November 2021, but seemed optimistic that Mercedes' new car could eventually find itself in the mix this year.

He added: “[I’m] much more excited. For the first qualifying session to have been so poor, there was so much preparation today and then it didn't go as planned… But that's racing. But in terms of season, for sure. Knowing that we have a package that we can potentially compete with is really nice. »

Regarding Russell's qualifying efforts specifically, Hamilton said: “It shows what's possible, yes. And I think we really need to keep adding performances. If that's our platform from here, We can continue until the end of the season.”

Hamilton has never been shy about making aggressive setup changes in the build-up to F1 races and the seven-time champion admitted he took a different direction to Russell after Friday's two practice sessions.

“Yesterday George and I had identical car settings and the car felt good, then we drifted. He went one way and I went the other. You could say the one I was on wasn't not good on one lap. I hope it goes well in the race.”

Hamilton said he pushed for the change after running Friday's longer runs, effectively the team's best data on what the race could look like.

“I wasn't comfortable with my race pace and so I changed cars to hopefully improve the race pace. We'll see tomorrow if that's really the case, but trying to find a good balance for race pace.”