Lewis Hamilton leads the way as rivals accuse Mercedes of sandbagging and underplaying significance of compression ratio advantage.

As early as the shakedown, Toto Wollf, his two ever-loyal drivers and the German manufacturer's various customers, suggested that Red Bull and Ferrari were the benchmark, that the opposition had done a better job with the new engine formula, whilst playing down the significance of the so-called compression ratio loophole.

However, today's qualifying session, the true litmus test in terms of the early pecking order, proved once and for all that the Three Pointed Star had been feeding us all BS.

"What's clear is that they didn't show the engine power through any of testing because there was the whole talk of compression ratios, and they've obviously done a really solid job with their engine, which we have as well," said Hamilton, who talks from personal experience having won six of his titles in a Mercedes and indeed all of his titles powered by the German manufacturer.

"I want to understand why it's 0.2 seconds or more just through power per sector, and if it is the compression thing, I want to understand why the FIA hasn't done anything, and what is being done to rectify it," added the Briton.

"I hope it's not this compression ratio," he continued, "hopefully it's just pure power and we've got to do a better job, but if it is the compression thing, then I will be disappointed that the FIA would allow that to be the case -- that it's not to the book -- and I'll be pushing my team to do the same thing so we can get more power from our engine."

Qualifying seventh, almost a second off the pace, Hamilton, who talks from experience, warned: "If they have a few months of that, then the season's done. Not done... but seven races, a few months, you lose a lot of points when you are a second behind."

"Yesterday when we spoke I said half a second," said Charles Lecelrc, when asked about Mercedes advantage. "Now it's eight-tenths, so it's bigger than what I expected, for sure, but it was a very significant gap yesterday already.

"So I was very, very impressed this morning with the FP3 power that they've shown.

"It was just crazy, in the last lap of George especially, I looked at the data for the first time, and I had to re-upload it because I thought there was a problem on the things I was seeing," admitted the Monegasque. "But apparently not. So it's very, very impressive.

"I hope that very soon we are back a little bit closer, but it's a huge gap, so it will take a relatively long time," he added.

"It's what I said already in Bahrain," sighed Verstappen, 'let's wait and see in Melbourne, and you will see how fast they are'. So, for me, that's not a surprise."

Seemingly, for Russell, it was.

"I am definitely surprised by the gap," he said. "We have a really great engine, but we also have a great car, too, and that hasn't been highlighted enough.

"We want to win, we want to be on pole, we want to dominate the weekend, but it is a really long season, and we need to get through tomorrow and have a clean race.

"I definitely have to make hay while the sun shines," he added, causing members of the media to pay close attention to his nose should it slowly begin to grow in length. "My mentality coming into this race is if we started on the front foot, it doesn't guarantee anything. And if we started on the back foot, it doesn't guarantee anything either."

Yawn.

Check out our Saturday gallery from Melbourne here.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by ARL, 9 minutes ago

"If the M-B advantage was just the engine, and the compression farago, then the McLaren must be a duff chassis. There again maybe the total package has put the horror of the last few years behind them. Max might have made the gap less impressive, so the race can still be interesting. Leclerc to be ahead through the first corner???"

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2. Posted by dnorm, 19 minutes ago

"The FIA and f1 need to level the playing field fast. Domenicali needs to do something other than his normal lousy job."

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