Mercedes: The gap is too big

After Barcelona some dared run the headlines that Mercedes were back, we were optimistic they had found a solution for their awkward 2022 car. Monaco an anomaly was to be ignored, but in Baku with the power straights and the unforgiving twisty bits, Hamilton and Russell simply did not have the ammo.

That 'progress' was an apparition. The Silver Arrows were more like Silver Toothpicks around the ancient city.

Furthermore, Hamilton's poor form relative to teammate George Russell continued, on Saturday the younger driver was again a couple of tenths up on the seven-time F1 World Champion; the pair were fifth and seventh on the timing screens.

But alarmingly, for the once serial winning team, they were about 1.5 seconds down on Charles Leclerc's pole-winning time in the Ferrari, with the Red Bulls close behind, Mercedes are simply nowhere, and they know it.

"The gap is big," Wolff told Sky F1 afterwards, "It's a long lap time and we're lacking pretty much everywhere. I wish I didn't have to look at these kinds of overlays in the future, anymore."

Wolff added in the team report later: "I think the most we expected was to be third-quickest on the road, but Gasly put in a really strong lap to get between us. If you look at it through rose-tinted glasses you can see hopefully the four of them ahead come together in turn 1 and then we can win the race.

"But I think on pure pace, it's realistic to finish fifth and sixth. Strategy can play a big role, you can recover and make up positions if you are on the right strategy. We can gamble given the position we are in because when you're the hunter it's a different situation, so we'll be looking at all options for the race," explained Wolff.

During the session, Hamilton was investigated for driving too slowly during Q3, but he fobbed away concerns of any improper behaviour: "I don't really have a concern.

"First of all, I was offline and you have to be within a delta time and I was within my delta time. I wasn't below that out lap pace, so within that delta-time, I should be able to drive at the speed I want. I was offline, so I wasn't holding everyone up.

"I was trying to get a tow because we're so slow in a straight line but the guys behind didn't want to go by. So, I then went off and did my lap," added Hamilton, echoing his boss on the lack of performance in their package.

Later in the team report, Hamilton was bullish: "There's lots to look forward to tomorrow! It's a tricky and chaotic race with lots that can happen.

"All of the performance is when you get the car low so we're getting lower and lower but it's bouncing more than the other cars and putting pressure on our bodies. But we're still there!

"We're just very slow on the straights, which might be a struggle tomorrow in the race. We're going to give it everything and maybe we'll have, I hope, better race pace," added Hamilton.

His teammate in the sister car, Russell reported the harsh reality for his team: It was an optimised session but being over a second from pole is not where we want to be, it's probably the biggest gap we've seen this year.

"It's a tricky circuit, the most amount of 'real' corners we've experienced this season, so we have lots of work to do. The lap felt good, the car felt good but obviously, the gap isn't.

"We expect so much from ourselves and we're working so hard to bring more performance, but definitely this weekend has brought out the strengths and the weaknesses from all of us," added the Briton who will start the race directly ahead of his teammate on the grid.

Russell, at 185cm is among the tallest drivers on the current grid, and has been most vocal about the discomfort of driving these new-generation F1 cars.

He repeated it: "The feeling inside the car is okay other than down the straights, every single bump is the most rigid I have ever felt from any race car before and I can barely see the braking zone.

"But through the corners, the car feels good, so we know it's not a balance thing or not getting the car in the right window with the setup: it's more the downforce. We're balancing a lot of limitations to try and get the downforce.

"We know there's a lot there, but we just don't know how to extract it," admitted Russell, who will be looking to extend his run of seven consecutive top-five finishes this year; Baku is Round 8 of the 2022 F1 World Championship.

Mercedes trackside boss Andrew Shovlin summed it up aptly: "We'd hoped that the car would have been easier to work with here than in Monaco but it's not. However, the gaps to Ferrari and Red Bull are huge and it's the corners where we are losing the most."