Lewis Hamilton failed to reach Q3 in Melbourne and admitted that the W15 working window is very tight as the car’s behavior changes a lot based on the day’s conditions.
The seven-time world champion said that he felt optimistic after FP3. However, as the wind picked up during qualifying, the car behaved completely differently, and he couldn’t find the pace anymore, thus ending up in P11.
“FP3 felt really good for us, and I was feeling good and optimistic going into qualifying.
“But then the wind picked up quite a bit, the same as yesterday [in practice], and then the car was on such a knife-edge.”
Speaking about the race, the British driver said that he didn’t practice any long runs, so it is going to be a bit of a question mark tomorrow.
“I haven’t done a long run, so I don’t know, but the other guys are so fast around us.”
Ultimately, he said that Mercedes still has a lot of work to do and if the team can extract what’s good in the W15, then there is the possibility to fight for something more.
“It is three years in a row having a similar feeling.
“But there are spikes of ‘it could be good’ like in the morning and then it kind of disappears.
“If we can work our way, find that goodness in the car and make it more consistent and hold onto that, maybe we can be more competitive.
“But there’s lots of work to do.”