Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft has now explained what might have cost Mercedes up to four-tenths a lap during the Bahrain Grand Prix.
It was a difficult start to Lewis Hamilton’s final season driving for the Silver Arrows as he was outqualified and outraced by teammate George Russell.
However, speaking on the Sky Sports F1 Podcast, Croft has shared why Mercedes might have been losing so much time to their rivals in Sakhir.
David Croft shares where Mercedes lost time in Bahrain
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff would have hoped his team could have closed the gap to Red Bull over the winter break.
They were the best of the rest in 2023 but only narrowly ahead of Ferrari and Frederic Vasseur’s outfit appear to have the edge of them now.
George Russell put in a fantastic performance in qualifying, splitting the two Ferraris and finishing ahead of Sergio Perez.
However, Croft has explained why his Mercedes and that of Lewis Hamilton struggled during the race in Bahrain and ended up finishing 5 and 7.
Hamilton would have expected more as his Mercedes had more raw pace than Lando Norris’s McLaren and yet he couldn’t get past his fellow Brit.
His seat broke in the car making life even more difficult but ultimately his Mercedes wasn’t set up in the optimum way.
Bahrain Grand Prix result disappointing for Mercedes
Speaking about the performance of the Silver Arrows, Croft said: “I think you would have seen a better Mercedes on track had they not got the cooling set up completely wrong for Bahrain.
“They went wrong to the extent of about four-tenths of a second a lap and they had these big cooling issues and George and Lewis were having to lift and coast and by doing that they were cooling their tyres down as well, it was a knock-on effect.
“Mercedes are a better package than we saw in Bahrain.
“HPP [High Performance Powertrains] will set the parameters at which to run the engine and there was a miscalculation that wasn’t argued or otherwise by the chassis team, by the team at the track setting up the car.
“And if that is the case that’s good because that’s not a long-term problem, it’s not we’ve got a massive issue with the engine, it’s just there was a miscalculation for that race and I think Williams were suffering a bit as well and McLaren too.”
Mercedes will hope they can fix the cooling system issues outlined by Croft in Bahrain.
Wolff will hope his team can sort out the issues with the car in the short-term, but he does also have to start thinking about the future.
He’s got to find a driver to replace Hamilton and Wolff personally wants to hire one especially quick rival for 2025.
It would shake the world of Formula 1 if he managed to do it, but only time will tell to see what happens.
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