'If Max stays by the pool, a nice fight for the win will follow'

Smiling faces at Mercedes in Bahrain. With George Russell finishing third in qualifying, the German team are hopeful of a good result in Saturday's Grand Prix. Team principal Toto Wolff is not counting on a win, he revealed to F1TV. In that case, something has to happen to Max Verstappen first.

The difference between Russell and Verstappen was three tenths of a second in Q3. But in the race, the difference in speed between Mercedes and Red Bull could just be bigger. "It's pretty close," Wolff began. "So I think we're going to have a good fight. If Max tomorrow gets up and says, "I don't want to drive today, I'm going to rather be on the pool," Then I think we would have a great, great fight for the victory. But apart from that, he's [George] doing a mega job. So we'll fight for the podium."

According to Wolff, Mercedes would be better in terms of pace in the race than in qualifying. "But it's so close with everybody else. So it could well be, we have not such an effect as we expect. But at the end of the day, we're learning the car is a really good step. It does what we want. Not fast enough yet, but we're going to get there."

Lewis Hamilton had a tougher day in Bahrain. The seven-time champion was stuck in ninth place. Wolff suspects too many changes had been made to the setup of Hamilton's W15. "Now, we knew that what we're doing is going to have such an effect directionally, but maybe not the full impact," Wolff said.