Lewis Hamilton is cautious ahead of the start of the 2023 F1 season, and even if Mercedes doesn't hit the ground running in Bahrain, he says it's still the best team on the grid to deal with whatever challenge comes its way.
Last year, Hamilton suffered his first ever winless season in Formula 1, an unexpected shortfall rooted in the well-chronicled vagaries of the troubled silver arrow fielded by Mercedes last year.
The Brackley squad has worked hard to course-correct its trajectory, designing a 2023 contender that has hopefully retained the strengths of its predecessor while stripping out its weaknesses.
For Hamilton, his team's challenging 2022 campaign, while it hasn't broken his fighting spirit, it has encouraged the seven-time world champion to head back to the starting grid with a sentiment of prudence.
"I think this year, everyone is a lot more grounded," the Briton said last week at Mercedes' launch of its new all-black 2023 charger.
"We perhaps won’t be the fastest out of the gate, but we have the potential to close - hopefully we’ll be closer and have potential to close - the gap earlier on in the season."
A slow start in Bahrain wouldn't worry Hamilton who knows that Mercedes has the ability to deal with any curveball thrown at it. But the Briton does hope that his new mount will at the outset prove to be as fast and efficient as it looks in its ominous black livery.
"I wouldn’t say I’m bullish like I was last year," he said. "I would say just more cautious, I know that whatever we’re faced with, we have the best team to deal with whatever we come across.
"Now hopefully we hit the ground running, but it’s not always the case. And I think we showed last year that whatever we faced we can recover, so that’s what we’re trying to do."
Mercedes has retained on its 2023 car the zero-sidepod concept that it introduced last year. The team remains an outlier in that design area as most of its rivals have opted to emulate Red Bull in terms of sidepod design.
"Of course you can see that some of the cars are approaching what a Red Bull might look like, perhaps with the exception of Ferrari," Hamilton noted.
"I don’t think we’ve ever been a team that copied other people.
"We’ve always had our own mind and have always been a team that’s incredibly creative and innovative and likes to do it our way. And I think that’s worked in the past."
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