Hamilton surprised by Bahrain GP front row after major Mercedes upgrades
Photo: Race Pictures
Henry Eccles is a freelance Formula 1 journalist for GPblog, covering breaking news, live race blogs, and features across the F1 calendar. Since joining in 2026, he has produced high-volume reporting on the sport’s biggest stories, alongside feature pieces including analysis and historical content.
Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton has admitted he was surprised to secure a front row start at the Bahrain GP in Malaysia, with the Briton expecting more performance from his former team Mercedes after significant upgrades.
Finishing three tenths behind long-time rival Max Verstappen in Sepang, Hamilton is on the front row for only the second time in 2026, the last time coming at the Barcelona-Catalunya GP - which he won ahead of fellow Britons George Russell and Lando Norris.
Pointing to a straight-line speed deficit to rivals Mercedes and Red Bull post-qualifying, Hamilton explained why Ferrari were only expecting a third row start coming into the Bahrain GP weekend, but has praised the Scuderia for extracting the maximum after his P2 finish.
Meanwhile, over at Mercedes, team principal Toto Wolff has revealed his confusion over the Silver Arrows' poor performance in qualifying, with Kimi Antonelli finishing P4 - although bumped up a place after Isack Hadjar's grid penalty - while Russell could only secure a lowly P8 despite impressing earlier on during the weekend.
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Hamilton surprised by Mercedes' performance at Bahrain GP qualifying
Photo: Race Pictures
Hamilton, who won seven of his eight world championships at the German team, has expressed similar shock, having anticipated Mercedes' major aero upgrades this weekend would "propel them even further forwards." The Silver Arrows already lead Ferrari at the top of the standings with a 160-point gap after 16 rounds of action.
Asked on whether he was surprised with the front row start, Hamilton told media, including GPblog: "Yes, definitely. Firstly, congrats to Max. He’s been so quick all weekend. We were kind of looking at fifth or sixth, throughout the weekend, in the ultimate pace compared to the rest.
"And we saw Mercedes come with a big upgrade and, considering they’ve been winning every race, thought the upgrade would really propel them even further forwards. But it’s just interesting to find ourselves here. The car felt great. We’ve made lots of changes. I think they’ve got a great package."
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Honing in on Ferrari's lack of speed on the straights, Hamilton explained the Scuderia are losing as much as four tenths to Red Bull in Sepang, but has praised the team's execution so far to deliver the promising starting position for Sunday.
"Red Bull have obviously been making some great progress," Hamilton added. "I mean, the only place we lose is down the straights to them. I think we’re losing three or four tenths on the straights to them, which we know of, and so we just work as hard as we can to try and maximise in the corners.
"But I think we were able to do that today. So, this is really down to the mechanics and the engineers. We all did a really great job together, and then also execution was really on point. So, if we could keep this up, hopefully we can get better results moving forwards.
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