Lewis Hamilton ensures that Mercedes’ W15 is an “amazing car” with significant potential and not the “evil sister” of its troubled predecessors.
Two weeks ago in Saudi Arabia, after concluding his race in Jeddah a lowly ninth, Hamilton urged his team to put their head down and “make some big changes” to claw back the Brackley squad’s deficit relative to its direct Ferrari and McLaren rivals, led alone Red Bull.
The Briton singled out the W15’s weakness in high speed corners due to its instability, a characteristic that made him feel like he was racing in a different category in Jeddah.
But ahead of this weekend’s round of racing in Melbourne, Hamilton appears to have found a renewed sense of optimism about Mercedes’F1 car.
“It's definitely not that evil sister or anything like that,” Hamilton said.
“I do think we have an amazing car; it has a lot of potential in it. We just haven't maximised it at the moment through set-up.
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"We're obviously not happy with the performance in those first couple of races. But I think there's a lot more potential in it that we just haven't quite extracted yet.
"So, that's what everyone's focus is on, just trying to understand the car. We're hoping this weekend is a step forward.
“A huge amount of work has gone on - everyone's heads are down in the numbers. I feel positive this weekend. We've had two not such great races, but there's a long way ahead.”
©Mercedes
Hamilton’s newfound positivity is perhaps rooted in Mercedes past success at Albert Park, a track where the German outfit has always performed well.
Perhaps this familiarity, coupled with potential behind-the-scenes progress with the car, has sparked Hamilton's renewed confidence.
But the seven-time world champion is also highly confident in his engineers ability to solve any issues lying under the skin of the W15 silver arrow.
"I think we had a really good winter or three-day test that we had," he said. "We've made big improvements with this car - just in terms of generally driving it, it feels like a much, much better car, much more like a race car.
"But it can drop off one end or the other end. It's a narrow working window with these types of cars. I do believe that we've still got that winning mindset within the team.
"I have absolute faith that these guys are going to fix any of the problems that we have, we will get there.
"The fact that Max has 58 points and I have eight points after two races, if you're logical about it… you have to be conscious it's a very long season also, so things can change but it's going to be very hard to catch those guys.
“Their car, they drop it on the track and it just works. For us, we are really, really grinding to pick up that performance and get it to where we need to be.
"The dream and the goal is still, if we can get wins this year, or podiums this year, I think that could be really amazing.
"To finish second in constructors last year given the issues we had with the car just shows what we can do with something that's not even perfect. So I'm hoping that we can do that again this year."
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