Mercedes appeared a good distance off the tempo in apply for the Bahrain season-opener on Friday and 7 instances Method One world champion Lewis Hamilton and new workforce mate George Russell noticed no fast repair.

Hamilton was ninth within the second session at Sakhir, with Russell fourth. The pair had been seventh and fourth respectively within the opening apply.

Crimson Bull’s world champion Max Verstappen topped the timesheets with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz second and third in apply two.

“It is all about lap time and we’re definitely not the place we need to be,” stated Russell. “I believe we have made a little bit of progress fixing some points, however the tempo simply is just not there in any respect in the meanwhile.

“We’re each struggling a bit with the automotive and we’re a good distance off the tempo of Crimson Bull, Ferrari, even the likes of AlphaTauri. Alfa Romeo are seemingly on our tempo and even faster. So we have a bit of labor to do.

“We’re actually throwing every thing at it in the meanwhile to try to unlock the potential we predict is there. However we’re simply actually struggling to faucet into it and every thing we attempt is perhaps one step ahead and two steps again.

“It’ll take time. All of us hoped we may have solved it for this weekend however how issues stand in the meanwhile we aren’t within the battle.”

Hamilton stated the issues Mercedes had skilled prior to now initially of a season had been small compared.

“Every part we do to try to type of repair it does not actually change that,” he stated. “It seems that it’s in all probability going to be a extra long term repair, so nothing within the quick time period.”

Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin informed Sky Sports activities the workforce, who’ve received the constructors’ title for the previous eight years, wanted to unlock the true efficiency.

“On the one lap, we had been (on a) one step softer tyre with the automobiles we might prefer to compete with doing related instances so its fairly evident there’s one thing to do there … it does really feel like we have floor to catch up,” he stated.