Hamilton feels ‘a long way away’ from Red Bull-Ferrari

Scraping a point at the Saudi Arabian GP, Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes’ W13 needs “more grip” and “more power”.

Hamilton had a weekend to forget at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, the seven-time World Champion eliminated from qualifying at the very first hurdle.

Based purely on a lack of pace, Hamilton finished Saturday night’s qualifying down in 16th place and admitted he’d gone with the wrong set-up.

However, set-up is something that Mercedes are having to play around with as extreme porpoising with their W13 means they are having to raise the ride-height which is compromising their downforce.

“Right now we are not fighting for the top step, we are still far off the guys who are ahead and we’ve got a lot of work to do. It feels like a long way away,” Hamilton said on Sunday night having finished P10.

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“We need more grip and we need more power.

“The end result was not great but the race was going really well, I felt relatively well on the hard tyre. I was keeping up with George and I think I put in some decent times and pace considering how old the hard tyres were and then the strategy at the end.

“I don’t know if it was strategy or the virtual safety car, we lost out so much so I think we will keep working hard and keep fighting because that’s all we can do.”

Not the race we were hoping for, but we’ll take our lessons from Jeddah and continue the