Wolff: Gap not ridiculous but not where we want to be

Mercedes have been dogged by a lack of pace in testing, the W14 not a very handy car, sharing too many negative traits with last year's cars as opposed to the fine specimens that took the team to eight consecutive F1 titles.

Those heady days are turning into distant memories, as the once serial winners can somehow see the positives in qualifying sixth and seventh, beaten incidentally by their customer team Aston Martin and their fighting 'newcomer' Fernando Alonso.

One would imagine it pretty humiliating for the once 'untouchables' of F1, that a six-tenths deficit to the benchmark qualifying time is not seen as a bad thing according to Wolff.

After qualifying in Bahrain, the Mercedes boss reflected: "The gap is not ridiculous considering we only ran one tyre at the end but it is not where we want to be. We are continuing to develop the concept and thinking we could land it and fight for pole position and that wasn't the case today.

"That is the gap (six tenths) and this is what we need to find, or more, to win. They both didn't have clean laps, but it wouldn't have changed. We could have potentially overtaken Alonso with both cars but this is where we are.

"Lewis is absolutely in the same choir (on the car concept). We are super critical with ourselves and what we need to achieve. There is no such thing as a wholly car, we are looking at everything to get it right with the concept, should we have reacted earlier, all of that," explained Wolff.

The Mercedes team boss added: "Everybody in the engineering team thinks like that and we just need to get our act together. We going to get his eighth. He has, compared to Alonso, another four years in him as a minimum so we just need to get it done.

"Even if I have to push him around the track to win the eighth I am going to do everything that is needed," concluded Wolff.

Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin, was also not too perturbed, and echoed his boss' sentiments: "Clearly, we're disappointed to be so far off pole but we looked much further off yesterday. It's encouraging that the car responded to the overnight changes, and we've managed to improve a few of the issues like the high-speed cornering.

"Through the morning session the car was behaving quite predictably given the hotter conditions. There was a bit of fine-tuning going into qualifying and early on, it looked like we were in a pretty good place.

"As the sessions went on the others seemed to be finding a bit more pace. We also only had one set of tyres for the final part of Qualifying so that added up to leaving us with a gap that's bigger than we'd like but one that we'll be working hard to close down.

"Our straight-line speed looks strong, and our degradation seems to be in a reasonable place; the Red Bulls are out of reach from what we have seen but it would be good if we can get into a race with the Ferrari and Aston Martins," concluded Shovlin.

Mercedes only won one race last year when Russell triumphed in Sao Paulo for them, but Hamilton had a win-less season for the first time since his rookie year back in 2007; a turnaround is needed, and while the deficit may not be huge to Red Bull, behind them - and now even ahead of them with Fernando! - Mercedes are faced with a midfield that is as compact as ever and closing on them.