Mercedes thought they could handle Alonso: 'We would have accepted it'

The disappointment at Mercedes after the mediocre Bahrain GP weekend becomes more understandable as Mercedes trackside engineer Andrew Shovlin hints that they at Mercedes did not expect Fernando Alonso to be faster.

Alonso of customer team Aston Martin was indeed faster and made it clear with two nice overtaking runs past Lewis Hamilton and George Russell that he had the faster car. According to Shovlin, the team only saw on track how fast Alonso was in his Aston Martin. The team employed a fierce defensive strategy because they thought they could beat Aston Martin.

It shows why Mercedes is so disappointed after the Bahrain race. Shovlin goes into a video on YouTube on when Hamilton was brought in for new tyres while his tyres were still good. Shovlin: "That was because Alonso was two seconds behind us and was slowly getting closer. That put him in the zone to do an undercut on us. It was a defensive stop."

Mercedes would have liked Hamilton's stint to be longer, but they did not yet know Alonso was so fast. "Now, as it happens Alonso had the faster car. He was able to pass on track anyway. If we'd known that, we might have accepted that we would lose the position." In the end, Hamilton also fell prey to Carlos Sainz. Shovlin admits that his driver might have had a better chance against the Ferrari had he not been brought in too early.