Mercedes is "a carrot to keep pushing", says Alpine boss

Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer has claimed that Mercedes is a “carrot” for his team to keep pushing. Given the Silver Arrows' struggles to understand their 2022 challenger, Szafnauer believes Alpine can “catch up” to the reigning world champions within a few races’ time. Speaking to GPFans following the Saudi Arabian GP, he said:

“It’s a carrot to keep pushing. It will take us a few races, a variety of races to assess where we are in the pecking order then, like I said, it will be a development race.”

At the Saudi Arabian GP a week ago, the German team seemed to be in danger of being beaten by Alpine. While they struggled more during Qualifying, the reigning constructors' champions had just enough pace during the race to edge out both Alpines. Szafnauer added, saying:

“[On] race pace, watching the race, they are clearly ahead of us. Maybe they had some issues in qualifying. We’re going to push hard to try and compete with them but sitting here today it looks totally like they have a better race car than us.”

While the Alpine drivers’ infighting during the early part of the race might have helped Mercedes to some extent, Lewis Hamilton’s poor qualifying meant Alpine still scored more points than the Silver Arrows.

Meanwhile, according to Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff, his team is currently in the “no man’s land” between the front runners and the midfield. Wolff said his team is working hard to fix their issues and will hopefully join Ferrari and Red Bull in a three-way battle for the title.

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Mercedes’ conservative approach to set-up in Saudi Arabia led to Hamilton’s Q1 elimination

Mercedes’ relatively “conservative approach” while setting up Lewis Hamilton’s car ahead of the Saudi Arabian GP potentially led to the Briton’s shocking exit in Q1, according to George Russell.

Explaining the “experiments” that the team did ahead of qualifying while trying to get a good balance from the cars to GPFans, Russell said:

“There’s so many factors at play when we’re balancing [the car] and sometimes we change the setup thinking it will improve but it makes it slightly worse. It’s seemingly a little bit inconsistent. On Lewis’ [Hamilton] side of the garage they probably went more conservative with the setup than we did.”

For the first time in over a decade, Lewis Hamilton was eliminated from Q1 on pure pace alone at the 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. After his shocking exit, Hamilton had attributed his lack of performance to a “setup experiment” gone wrong.