Lewis Hamilton thinks Mercedes is not "competing for wins" at the moment

Lewis Hamilton has suggested that Mercedes might not be fighting for wins initially after the struggles faced in Bahrain. The Briton revealed that although their car has potential, there is no quick turnaround like last season.

Speaking to Sky Sports F1 on the final day of testing, Hamilton said:

“It is too early to have those kind of thoughts about the world championship, but at the moment I don’t think we will be competing for wins. There is potential within our car to get us there. We’ve just got to learn to be able to extract it and fix some of the problems, which is what we’re working on.”

According to the Briton’s statement, the team is struggling to extract performance from the car or optimize its competitiveness despite the potential of their car package. The Mercedes driver believes they might not be targeting wins anytime soon over the next two weekends in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Explaining the struggles of the weekend and denying sand-bagging, the Mercedes driver said:

“We have some hurdles to overcome and obviously next week we’ll get a much better showing of our pace, but I think people will be surprised, because people keep talking about whether we’re talking ourselves down or not, but it’s a bit different this year.”

Refuting claims that Mercedes are sandbagging and pretending to struggle, Hamilton revealed that their rivals will be surprised at their struggles, which are real. The multi-champion suggested that this year might be different in terms of competitiveness.

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Lewis Hamilton believes Mercedes struggles will take time to be resolved

Suggesting that Mercedes' struggles are more than a weekend of work, the Briton revealed that the team will need a lot more time to resolve their balance issues. Lewis Hamilton believes they have bigger problems and hurdles to overcome before they are able to be competitive again.

Sharing information revealed by his team about Mercedes' performance, Hamilton said:

“It’s not as good. It’s not going to look as good as it did last year with the difficult session we had in practice and then switch over to the race. I think we have far bigger challenges this time and they’re not one-week turnarounds, I think they’ll take a little bit longer, but from what I’m told, we have a significant amount of pace to find.”

According to the Briton’s statement, his team have suggested that the technical issues with the W13 will not be a quick fix. If their struggles are real, facing extensive competition from Ferrari, Red Bull F1, and customer team McLaren might make hunting for an eighth title an uphill task for Lewis Hamilton in 2022.