Wolff honest about Mercedes' performance: ‘These teams are ahead of us’

Mercedes did not have the best start of the season, as their drivers, George Russell and Lewis Hamilton finished in P5 and P7 respectively in Bahrain. In the beginning of the race, Russell was close to the podium, but he eventually got overtaken by both Ferraris. Toto Wolff explained his team’s Grand Prix.

"No given the issues I think this is where we are. Third quickest team behind the Ferraris, and the Red Bull. We’re obviously galaxies away from Max so we are going to have to see what happens," Toto Wolff told Sky Sports following the race.

Wolff also explained that they had a problems this evening in Bahrain. "It was odd. As the race unfolded, we had to lift and coast more to manage the temperatures of the power unit. We closed it up too much. That was the main issue. And then we didn't have the pace weirdly."

He continued: "I mean Max was in a different galaxy. We need to look at ourselves and why we lost so much performance on the harder tyre. We got the cooling level wrong and therefore you need to lift and coast. You lose performance on the tyres. It was a bit of a vicious circuit."

'The team have to learn'

Ahead of the race in Saudi Arabia, Mercedes will hope to fix their early troubles quickly. "There's lots of learning I can't really respond yet because we don't understand why the pace wasn't there, so the data will hopefully give us more clue," Wolff explained.

He added: "Even when we won eight in a row I wasn't optimistic so we need to keep the glass-half-empty mindset in order to figure ourselves out of the situation."