Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes ‘have a lot of problems’ and need ‘four races at least’ before winning

Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes could struggle to challenge for victory in the ‘first four races at least’ of the 2022 Formula 1 season as they try to tame their new W13 car.

Mercedes brought significant upgrades to the pre-season test which took place at Sakhir last week, and its sidepod-less concept caused controversy when it was revealed. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner originally labelled it “illegal” before rowing back on his claim, but the design did not help to propel the team towards the top of the laptime leaderboard.

Hamilton and new team-mate George Russell both voiced concerns about the ability of Mercedes new W13 to compete at the front of the field. 37-year-old Hamilton went as far as to say: ‘At the moment, I don’t think we’ll be competing for wins.’

Now, Hamilton says it could take at least the first portion of the season for Mercedes to understand their car and make the improvements required to compete for race victories.

‘The testing has been difficult,’ Hamilton explained to an audience at the 2022 Dubai Expo. It’s crazy because, years ago, we used to have a lot of test days and now we only have, literally, three days in the car altogether? So it’s not a lot of laps.’

‘When we go into this race, this week, we’re still learning about the car – we probably will be for the first four races at least. We’ve got a lot of problems. As you have seen, everyone is bouncing up and down.’

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Hamilton was referring to Mercedes’ struggles with porpoising in Bahrain, a problem which is affecting all of the new