“It’s a racing car,” declared Hamilton after FP2 in Sakhir. Maybe it won’t be worth the Red Bull RB20, but Lewis and Russell’s new car manages to keep a very low stance and is much more drivable than in the past. And that’s no small starting point
“The Mercedes W15 is a racing car.” This is Lewis Hamilton’s statement which suggests that the basis of this single-seater is valid, especially when compared with the two cars that preceded it, the W14 and the W13 respectively. The second free practice session in the Bahrain GP, with large variations in wind direction, actually posed conditions for comparison at track level, which the Stevenage champion himself declared to be totally different from those encountered in the tests a week earlier . “It’s surprising to be so fast, but we don’t bite off more than we can chew. We keep our heads down and work on the set-up,” added the seven-time world champion, who will drive a Ferrari from 2025. “I think we will be fighting with Ferrari and maybe Aston Martin and McLaren, but not with Red Bull over the race distance,” Lewis underlined, saying that if Verstappen were to start on pole he would most likely end up racing alone like in 2023.