Verstappen not convinced by downbeat Mercedes

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Reigning world champion Max Verstappen has made it clear that he's not buying Mercedes' claims that the German squad is having to play catch up heading into the first race of the 2022 season.

The Red Bull driver ended this week's three-day pre-season test at Bahrain with the quickest lap of the week despite claiming he was never going 'full beans', over a second quicker than the best that Hamilton could offer.

Hamilton subsequently stated that "“At the moment I don't think we'll be competing for wins", while his new team mate George Russell said Mercedes were “a step behind our rivals” and added: “the performance isn’t there”.

Read also: Verstappen never in 'full beans' qualifying spec in Bahrain

But Verstappen believes that his rivals are just engaging in their usual practice of not fully showing their hand, and keeping their true form to themselves until the season opener.

"If someone is doing well, or a team that everyone expects to do well, then it’s: 'Oh no, we're definitely not the favourite!’" he said after the end of testing on Saturday.

"Then a week later, when things do go well, all of a sudden it's: 'Oh no, but we turned it around completely within a week. Not normal, unbelievable work. Thanks to all people in the factory!’”

Verstappen pointed to last year, when a similar lacklustre time in testing for Mercedes was followed by victory in the first race of the year.

But his focus isn't exclusively on Mercedes, with Verstappen's eye also caught by the improvement at Ferrari whom he noted had been “consistently fast” across both tests at Barcelona and Bahrain.

"It shows that they clearly have a stable car at the moment,” he said in response to questions posed by Motorsport.com. “It just looks good for them, they have had very few problems as well.

"We will see next week who is fastest, but so far they have had a very good test," he continued.

“The last two years weren't great for [Ferrari], so you automatically start looking at this season a bit earlier than some of the other teams.

It's more than normal that they started earlier than us on the 2022 car, and that's okay as well.

“In the end, with these new cars, the development rate during the season is the most important thing.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.