Satisfaction and disappointment at Mercedes: 'Red Bull out of reach'

Qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix turned out better for Mercedes than the team itself had envisaged. Nevertheless, the team cannot really be happy with the gap to the front row, occupied by Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez.

Still, things looked a lot rosier for Mercedes on Saturday than a day earlier. "Clearly, we're disappointed to be so far off pole, but we looked much further off yesterday," said Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin in a Mercedes press release.

Mercedes relatively satisfied

Shovlin calls it "encouraging" that the car responded to the changes the team made during the night from Friday to Saturday. "We've managed to improve a few of the issues like the high-speed cornering," the Briton continued. During the morning session, the car behaved predictably given the warmer conditions, which in itself came as a welcome surprise for Mercedes.

Still, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were ultimately unable to keep up with the pace of the front-runners. "There was a bit of fine-tuning going into qualifying and early on, it looked like we were in a pretty good place. As the sessions went on the others seemed to be finding a bit more pace," Shovlin continued.

In part, Shovlin says this can be explained by a strategic choice. "We also only had one set of tyres for the final part of qualifying so that added up to leaving us with a gap that's bigger than we'd like but one that we'll be working hard to close down," he explains.

Furthermore, the engineer sees encouraging things with the new W14. "Our straight-line speed looks strong, and our degradation seems to be in a reasonable place; the Red Bulls are out of reach from what we have seen but it would be good if we can get into a race with the Ferrari and Aston Martins," Shovlin said.