Racing news
Mercedes driver says his team’ s struggling against ferrari‘ tricks’
Lewis Hamilton has admitted Mercedes has been “bluffing” against Ferrari in recent Formula 1 races as it struggles to match the pace of its title rival.
Despite appearing to have the quicker car in the last three races, it was only at Spa last weekend that Ferrari was able to beat Mercedes to victory.
That result means Vettel has closed to within 17 points of Hamilton and the Brit admits the pace of Ferrari is a major concern.
“They’ve had the upper hand on us for some time,” he said. “I would say the last two races in particular we just did a better job.
“The cards we were dealt with, we did a better job with them – even though they had a better car. We’ve called their bluff almost. But there’s only a certain amount of times you can do that before the opponent realises.
“Moving forwards, we do have some performance coming, but I’m sure they’ll have performance coming. But today, the particular place they really did well is they didn’t have any [tyre] blistering. The tyres worked really well for them, that wasn’t expected, so I’m hoping that’s not the case in the next race.”
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff added that traction is an area where his team is struggling compared to Ferrari.
“You can see the deficits,” he said. “It is the slow speed, and it is the traction. And this is what I would summarise as the main weaknesses at the moment and today we were clearly, compared to the Ferraris and the Red Bulls and the Force Indias, the car that was cooking the tyres the most.
“I am not confident that we will have enough of a margin. We will have some tracks that suit us, or that should suit us more. And then there will be tracks where we are definitely the challenger, like Singapore, and maybe Mexico. And this is a fact.”
Immediately after the Belgian race Hamilton described Ferrari as having “a few trick things on the car”, but he later clarified he didn’t mean anything illegal.
“I would hope that we would have innovations on our car rather than tricks on the engine,” added Wolff, before saying he was confident that the FIA was monitoring the situation carefully.
“It is a completely human nature that if you are being outperformed on track then you are hopefully looking at yourself then you are looking at your competitors and if you haven’t got the explanation, then you are trying to imagine all the nasty things. I haven’t got any information but I have a real faith in the FIA.”
Race director Charlie Whiting said he was “amused” by the comments made by Hamilton and Mercedes on the issue and that the FIA is happy with Ferrari’s car.