Mercedes - Red Bull Have Faster Car

Calum Gill 19:18 18/03/2021

Mercedes have said that they expect Red Bull to have a quicker car when the season starts next Sunday in Bahrain.

The current world champions struggled in testing last weekend, with their car appearing to lack pace and stability, backed up by two spins for Lewis Hamilton.

Mercedes strategy director James Vowles, in a video released by the team, said: "There are a lot of unknowns, no-one up and down the paddock can pinpoint exactly where they are. But there are a few trends that have come out. I'd say Red Bull are ahead on performance. They are the class act."

Vowles added: "Are we going to have a close season? I would say so. Red Bull are a fierce adversary, they've got a strong package and clearly came out of the box very, very quick. The result of that is across the season and across different types of track layouts, I am sure you will see us move forwards and backwards relative to them, but I don't believe we are going into this particularly finding all the performance that is missing or being ahead of them."

Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said: "The wind made it tricky. When the wind is behind the car, you lose a lot of downforce because effectively the air speed is reduced. So, some corners where the wind was behind, it was prone to doing that, and then also the tyres are quite easy to overheat on that circuit and if you start sliding, you tend to lose grip and it gets worse. So, there are a few problems. Now, importantly we could see that some of our competitors weren't struggling in the same way as us, so we need to put quite a focus on understanding why the rear end was a bit weak, how we can get it more stable and predictable and that work is going on now."