Mercedes Still Insist that Ferrari are Superior to Them

If there was an award for sandbagging, the Mercedes AMG F1 team would win gold, silver and bronze. Inspite of the fact that Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes have amassed almighty leads in the championship, they are still wary of Scuderia Ferrari. According to Hamilton, the team still has work to do if they want to catch Ferrari in terms of power.

Many, including Mercedes, believe that Ferrari possesses one of the strongest power units in 2019. The proof of the pudding was the SF90’s speed in the final sector of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, which seemed to rival Mercedes’s own speed.

To counter Ferrari’s pace, Mercedes introduced their Phase 2 engine update in Canada. The upgrade was hot on the heels of Ferrari’s second-spec power unit, introduced earlier. However, Mercedes continued to be one step behind Ferrari in Canada and Lewis Hamilton believes that Ferrari is on “another level”.

“We’ve got work to do, we’ve seen how quick Ferrari were at the weekend, and they were kinda right there at the last race [in Monaco] as well,” said Hamilton.

“It will be interesting to see how it plays out. They’re quicker than us on the straights. They have another level of engine mode they can go to, particularly in qualifying but also the race, so we’ve got work to do.”

“But at least we’ve got a good fight. They were so strong this weekend and a real formidable force.”

“We were very, very fortunate to be in the battle with [Sebastian Vettel] as they genuinely could have had a 1-2 if they had a front row for example, but luckily I was able to stop it.”

He continued: “It’s not an assumption, you’ve seen in qualifying the three tenths or six tenths, whatever it is, on the straights they’re able to pull up.

“And in the race I know that all of a sudden they pick up the pace on the straights. That’s the name of the game.

“They’ve clearly done a great job with their power unit. It used to be a point where Mercedes was ahead in that area, by a big chunk, and we’ve got work to do there.

“They are ahead of us at the moment, [there’s] space for us to work in.”