Lewis Hamilton's teammate George Russell admits the Mercedes car 'exceeded expectations' after 2024 F1 Bahrain GP FP2

Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes teammate George Russell has claimed that the W15 'exceeded expectations' after Hamilton and he finished 1-2 in the FP2 session in Bahrain.

Every team and driver was looking forward to the second Free Practice session as it would be the indicator for the qualifying and race conditions on Friday and Saturday, respectively. The importance of the session was magnified as it was the first time in the 2024 season that the fans could see a pecking order.

However, everyone including Mercedes driver George Russell was left surprised after he and Lewis Hamilton finished the session atop the timings. Speaking with F1.com, the Brit said:

“We’re not going to get carried away with ourselves. The qualifying pace looked really strong. We still need to try and understand why it was so good. We made some changes from the test and it exceeded our expectations, but ultimately the long run pace – which is where it all happens – Max was still ahead of us.

“It was very close with Fernando [Alonso], with Lando [Norris], and the Ferraris, and Lewis and I were very similar as well, so we’ve got a real fight on our hands in race pace. But as I said, we’re really pleased with the day, the car’s performing really well, but we’re not going to get carried away just with the timesheets just yet.”

Lewis Hamilton analyzes the FP2 session after finishing as P1

Lewis Hamilton has stated that he was 'shocked' to see where he finished as he didn't expect the performance jump in the FP2 session after a tricky opening hour in the afternoon on Thursday.

As quoted by the aforementioned source, the Mercedes driver said:

“The track was so different compared to practice last week. Otherwise it was feeling okay, but we didn’t really know where we stood on the C2 tyre, and then in this session, [with] the car, we made some improvements over the session.

“Again I don’t understand, it’s a shock to see us where we are. We’ll take it for now but we can’t get ahead of ourselves. We need to keep our heads down, and keep working on the set-up. I think our long-run pace is nowhere near the Red Bulls, for example, and I think we were a lot closer so we’ve got some work to do there.”

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell would hope that their FP2 performance won't be a one-off and that they will be able to carry the momentum into qualifying and race.