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Lewis Hamilton has claimed Mercedes will not be fighting victories as the 2022 Formula 1 season gets underway next week.
While many regard Mercedes among the favourites, Hamilton worked to downplay his chances, at least in the early part of the year.
Throughout testing, the Anglo-German operation which has dominated F1 in recent years has enjoyed comparatively smooth running, with data suggesting it has performance on par with that of Ferrari.
The Scuderia is widely considered to have enjoyed the best of pre-season testing, though with teams operating to their own programmes, getting an exact read is impossible.
Even still, Mercedes is thought to be among the leading three teams, together with Ferrari and Red Bull.
Despite that, George Russell earlier this week downplayed his team’s chances, a move now echoed by Hamilton.
“It’s a little bit too early to get into that kind of, or have those kind of thoughts,” Hamilton said when asked if he had concerns he wouldn’t be part of the title fight this season.
“At the moment we don’t think we’ll be competing for wins but there is potential within our car to get us there.
“We’ve just got to learn to extract it and fix some of the problems, which is what we’re working on.
“But we have some hurdles to overcome. Obviously next week we’ll get a much better showing of the pace, but I think people will be surprised.”
Mercedes last year failed to impress during pre-season testing, with Red Bull heading into the season as firm favourites.
Hamilton then won the season opener, seeing off a late challenge from Max Verstappen.
However, the 37-year-old suggests the struggles this year feel very different to those of 12 months ago.
“It feels a lot different,” he said when asked to compare testing in Bahrain in 2021 to the last three days.
“I don’t think it’s going to look as good as it did last year with the difficult session we had in practice and then switch over to the race.
“I think we have far bigger challenges this time, and they’re not one week turnarounds. I think they will take a little bit longer.
“From what I’m told, we have a considerable amount of pace to find.”
The Bahrain Grand Prix gets underway on Friday with opening practice beginning at 23:00 AEDT.
