Lewis Hamilton says his Mercedes’ deficit in Jeddah’s high speed corners made him feel like he was in “a different category” altogether compared to his rivals in Saturday’s Saudi Arabian GP.
Hamilton launched his race from eighth on the grid, one spot behind teammate George Russell, but the seven-time world champion quickly moved up to third when he stayed out during an early Safety Car period.
Opting for a long stint on the medium tyre, the Briton stabilized his position in fifth while battling McLaren’s Oscar Piastri for 20 laps before he undertook his single pitstop on lap 36, eventually crossing the checkered flag a lowly P9.
Hamilton singled out his car’s weakness in Jeddah’s high-speed corners as its main deficit.
“The car is relatively good in the low-speed and not so bad in the medium,” he told Sky F1 after the race. “But in the high-speed we are miles off.
“It was like I was in a different category when I was going through the high-speed between the other people, the other guys around me.”
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Hamilton admitted to feeling frustrated by Mercedes’ seemingly stagnant year-over-year performance, suggesting the Brackley squad hasn’t made big enough changes to pull itself out of its relative rut.
“It’s frustrating, for sure, to be three years in a row in almost the same position. It’s definitely tough,” he added.
“I know we’ll get our heads down and we’ll keep working away. I know everyone back at the factory is pushing as hard as they can. But we’ve definitely got to make some big changes.
“We haven’t made big enough changes, perhaps. You look at the three teams ahead of us, they still have different concepts to where we are in some areas. So we’ve got some performance to add, that’s for sure.”
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff echoed Hamilton’s observations, adding that the German outfit will take away its learnings from the weekend and put its head down in the next couple of weeks to try and improve its form for Melbourne.
“It is clear that we are struggling with the car in the high-speed corners,” said Wolff.
“We are competitive elsewhere but in three corners here we were losing about half-a-second. It was therefore incredibly difficult for the drivers to attack with.
“There is so much learning we can take from these first two race weekends.
“We need to get our heads down to analyse, understand and improve. It’s clear that we’ve got a lot of work to do but these tough days make you better.”
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Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin alluded to the bouncing trait denounced by Hamilton earlier in the weekend as the main cause for the W15’s instability in fast corners.
“Our high-speed performance has been weak, and the car is bouncing in those corners,” he said.
“That contributed to our poor qualifying but also meant we couldn’t challenge Aston Martin and the McLarens in the race. We were losing so much time in sector one that we spent the rest of the lap clawing it back.
“Overall, it has been a very frustrating weekend but ultimately one of our own making. We’ve seen glimpses of strong performance, but it’s not been easy to land the set-up in the right place and we’ve clearly got some weaknesses that still need ironing out.
“We are going to have to work hard between now and Melbourne to improve,” he concluded. “The tracks are similar and we don’t want another weekend like this one.”
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