Mercedes in trouble: "The podium and the 27 points flatter the car"

Mercedes did not emerge as the best team in 2022. The Silver Arrows are currently the third team behind Ferrari and Red Bull Racing in terms of speed. At Auto, Motor und Sport they explain how big the gap is that Mercedes has to make up.

Although Mercedes is currently the third car on paper, the team scored a lot better than Red Bull on Sunday in Bahrain. Red Bull saw Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez drop out in the closing stages of the race with technical problems, causing Lewis Hamilton and George Russell to both move up two places.

"The podium and 27 points flatter the car," AMuS writes on Mercedes. Without the Red Bull duo's failure, Mercedes would likely have scored only 18 points with fifth and sixth places as the final result.

In general, Mercedes misses about half a second per lap, but that gap is increasing, the German outlet states, "After 34 laps, Hamilton was 28.8 seconds behind. This is a loss of around eight tenths of a second per lap." The larger difference over several laps would be because Mercedes is pushing the tires harder.

According to Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, the difference is not because of the engines. Instead, the team only lost time when they drove on the harder tires. A somewhat striking statement, as Mercedes was the only team with Mercedes engines to score points in Bahrain.