Mercedes stunned: "It's disappointing to be looking at a 0.4s gap to pole"

For the first time in the hybrid era, Mercedes will not start the opening Grand Prix of the season from pole position. Red Bull will take the honours in the 2021 Bahrain Grand Prix and Mercedes are "disappointed" to be so far behind. 

For a short time, it looked like Lewis Hamilton had pulled the result out of the bag. But Verstappen hit back with three purple sector times and took control of the timesheets with a 1:28.997. Mercedes engineer Andrew Shovlin responds to the deficit in their press release. 

Disappointment

"It's disappointing at the first race to be looking at a 0.4s gap to pole but at least we know the performance we need to find going forward. It's also no secret that we've been struggling with the car around this circuit; it's nowhere near as easy to work with as the W11 but everyone in Brackley and Brixworth has been working hard since the test and we've learnt a lot about the W12 and found a more predicable balance, even if we're lacking overall pace," he said. 

"We'd wanted to get both cars onto the medium tyre to start the race which we managed to quite safely. Valtteri was a bit compromised in the final session by having used an extra soft in the first session but overall, it was good effort by the team and drivers, and should put us in a strong position for tomorrow."

Red Bull Racing signed Sergio Perez to give Max Verstappen strategic support at the front of the grid in the fight with Mercedes. However, that wasn't to be in the first round of the season after Perez failed to escape from Q2. Shovlin notes this. 

"It's hard to read where we are on race pace from the Friday long runs as we didn't land the car in the right window but we're fairly confident we've improved the rear grip so it will be less of a handful in the race. We might not be on pole but we have two cars at the front and an extra set of the hard tyres, so hopefully we can create some opportunities from that," he added.