Hamilton concedes Ferrari, Red Bull are ‘in another league’

Mercedes has faced a troubled start to F1’s new era after a difficult pre-season and Hamilton was only fifth-fastest during qualifying for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. 

The seven-time world champion ended up 0.680s off Charles Leclerc’s pole position time, while he was half a second adrift of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. 

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“I’m not saying I’m relieved,” Hamilton said. “But I’m generally really happy today. 

“Given how we’ve been the last few weeks, the struggles we’ve had and the problems we’ve had with the car, it’s a bit of a nightmare to drive. 

“We’ve just kept our heads down, kept working away and I’m proud of everyone for just staying positive. To get fifth in quali, those guys ahead of us are in another league. 

“So I’m generally happy with where we are. It’s not the front row, but we will make improvements and do the best we can tomorrow.” 

Hamilton, who had already ruled Mercedes out of contention for victories early on in the season, doubts he will have the race pace to challenge the Ferraris and Red Bulls. 

“Those guys will be going away,” he said. “We’re not in the fight with those. 

“They were a second ahead of us yesterday through race pace, so my battle is with the guys behind most likely. 

“Of course I’ll try to be as fast as I can and get ahead, but as I said their performance is quite ahead of ours.” 

Hamilton's new teammate George Russell ended up only ninth after he locked up at Turn 1 on his sole Q3 lap on fresh soft tyres. 

"We only had one set of tyres, I really pushed on my out lap, I got to Turn 1 and I just had no grip," the Briton explained. 

"I went one second slower than I did in Q2 and I was expecting to go a couple of seconds faster. It was a real shame, I’m glad I tried something but it’s easy in retrospect.

"We know we’re not where we want to be. P9 is much lower down on where the car is. We’re doing everything we can to try get the car back up front fighting the Ferraris and the Red Bulls. Not ideal but the race day is tomorrow." 

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said his team has to face up to the reality that it is currently the third-fastest team on the grid, while he also shouldered the blame for Russell’s disappointing Q3. 

“I think we need to be realistic of our performance level at the moment, that’s third quickest on the grid,” he explained. 

“Lewis put the car there, and for George, it was probably us mis-guiding him in his last outing. 

“We advised him to push the out lap stronger and he probably had no energy any more to the new tyre.”