04/04/2019
NEWS STORY
In the wake of pre-season testing, in the days leading up to the season opener in Melbourne, all the talk wasn't so much of whether Ferrari would dominate, but how much of an advantage it would enjoy.
As we all know, Mercedes not only took pole, it romped home to a 1-2 the following day, the Ferraris finishing fourth and fifth, woefully off the pace.
With many saying that Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton had been talking themselves down and Ferrari up, the Briton insisted that it was not BS, and that he and his team had really feared the Italian team's strength.
In the wake of the Bahrain Grand Prix, where the Italian cars finished third and fifth, behind another Mercedes 1-2, Hamilton claims that Ferrari's pace in the desert was proof that he and his team had not been overplaying the Maranello outfit's chances.
"We were outperformed," he told reporters. "We were surprised in the first race.
"I hear whispers that people think we were sandbagging or not telling the truth or all those things," he continued. "We said it how it was.
"When we went to the first race we truly believed, I was presented where everyone's positions were, and from our estimates and understanding of potential fuel loads and power modes and all these things we were behind from three-to-five tenths.
"Then we got to the first race and they didn't have any pace all of a sudden. We came out of the first race incredibly surprised and really, really happy to have had such a great result as it had been a hard winter for the team, as it is for everyone, and then we came to Bahrain.
"We are happy," he said, "but we are also conscious and aware of how lucky we were to come away with a 1-2.
"We all worked so hard through the weekend, as we do every weekend, but we underperformed," he admits. "Naturally you have lucky weekends. We have to go away and take the points and be grateful for them as you never know when at some stage it's flipped and we have an unfortunate weekend. We can't be jumping around in excitement because we know, and I know, that Charles did the job and should have won."
As in Melbourne, Hamilton's chances were somewhat compromised by a poor start.
"I'm just going to keep working at it," he said. "Basically you stumble, fall, get back up. Just keep pushing.
"I go away from the weekend feeling we worked really hard and made some good steps with the set-up through the weekend, moving in the right direction," he added. "It's a track that I struggle with, probably one of the most out of all of them, and so to come out ahead of Valtteri, who's really quick, always, as was Nico, and then to be in the mix, I was really happy with that."