Hamilton 'expected it would be worse' as Russell eyes podium

After finishing Friday's practice thoroughly down in the dumps, Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were both visibly cheered by how Saturday's qualifying session had gone in Bahrain.

Russell will start from sixth on the grid, with Hamilton just behind in seventh. Both drivers were within seven tenths of a second of the pole position time set by Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

“I thought it would be worse than that, so it’s positive,” Hamilton said later in the post-qualifying press conference. “I thought we would struggle to get into Q3, but we didn’t. We’re in there and we’re in amongst the fight.”

• Read also: Verstappen claims first pole of 2023 in Bahrain qualifying

Last year Mercedes was able to offset poor qualifying performances with much better race pace, but Hamilton admitted that he was unsure that would still be the case with this year's W14.

“We don’t know if we have the pace that we had in long runs last year,” he said. “Long run pace was good last year. I don’t know whether we have that with this car, so tomorrow will be telling.

"I’m hoping we can fight amongst the group that we’re with, and it’s really going to be just how good your long runs are.

"We're lacking overall downforce particularly at the rear,” he explained. “That’s why we can’t get on the power as early as the Red Bulls and the Ferraris on a single lap, and why we struggled with the [tyre] degradation."

Last year, Hamilton started from fifth on the grid and finished on the podium. This year, Russell hopes to do the same from sixth on the grid but admits that the presence of Fernando Alonso is a complicating factor.

"I think those two Red Bulls at the front are just going to disappear into the distance, so I guess the fight for third is definitely up for grabs," he said.

“The car felt okay. Nothing major,” he continued. “After yesterday, we had a bit of a shocker, so credit to all of the engineers who worked overnight and the people back at the factory to find a lot more pace.

"We’ve got to take some positives out of the fact that we made some good gains overnight and it’s probably given us a good direction for the future.

"To be fair this is probably where we expected to be after testing and ahead of the race weekend,” Russell acknowledged. "I think tomorrow, I’m hoping I’ve set [the car] up for the race, so hopefully it works better.

“Fernando’s a bit of an unknown," he added when asked whether he would be able to get the better of the much-improved Aston Martin at the start of the race, with the pair lining up alongside each other on the third row.

“I think even yesterday our race pace wasn’t too dissimilar to Ferrari, but considering our base performance seemed really poor yesterday we’re probably in better shape."

Meanwhile Hamilton was pleased to see his former team mate (at McLaren in his rookie season in 2007) doing so well once more. "I am genuinely happy for Aston, I think it's amazing to see their progress, the steps that they've taken,

“I'm really happy for Fernando. He's been here way longer than me. It's good to have him back in the mix - hopefully we get some good races."

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