Hamilton: Mercedes F1 suffers in Bahrain

The Mercedes W04 suffers with the rear tires on the abrasive track in Bahrain where the heat is hard for the tires to bear. Even if Pirelli opted this weekend for the hardest tires in its range, the Silver Arrows are having difficulty performing well on a flying lap. Nico Rosberg only took eighth place in the second session, half a second behind the reference time set by Kimi Räikkönen while Lewis Hamilton failed in tenth position, more than eight tenths behind the Finn. If the Brackley team still has an hour of testing tomorrow to perfect the settings of the single-seaters, the Briton fears a trying weekend for the team.

“Looks like we’re going to have a tough weekend.”, recognized the former world champion on Sky Sports News. “We need to find time but I don’t know where we are wasting it. The heat is so hard on the tires that degradation becomes very complicated to manage and we are clearly in a bad position against other teams. We changed the car settings with which we thought we would perform well on this track but we have to make sure we are on the right track. We are not as far away as today's times suggest but we will have a lot of work ahead of us and we will have a tough battle this weekend. »