Lewis Hamilton calls on Mercedes to improve 2022 car ‘as soon as possible’

Hamilton was third in Bahrain after experiencing issues with his Mercedes car

Lewis Hamilton finished third in Bahrain (Getty Images)

Lewis Hamilton wants Mercedes to fix their 2022 car “as soon as possible” after the team’s early struggles with performance and race pace.

It was a Ferrari one-two at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, with Charles Leclerc having the edge over team-mate Carlos Sainz, after both Red Bull cares retiring due to reliability issues.

Mercedes lasted the entire race, leading to Hamilton taking a surprise podium position, but both he and George Russell admitted afterwards that the car was difficult to drive.

“I don’t currently feel too stressed but I want to get in the fight as soon as possible,” Hamilton told RaceFans ahead of this weekend’s Saudi-Arabian Grand Prix.

“The last race was obviously an amazing feeling for us given where we thought we were going to be to come out with the result we did. But we can’t rely every weekend on that to happen so we need to do move forwards as fast as we can.”

Hamilton and Russell managed to secure third and fourth after the two Red Bull drivers had to retire. Hamilton was probed on what it is Mercedes have to fix and he responded: “We have issues, we’re fighting to fix them.

“I think there’s a lot of potential within our car and we’re just trying to work as hard as we can to rectify them as quick as possible.

“We’ve seen the amazing performance of some of the other teams, how close it is between all of us so I’m hopeful that we will improve. I have no doubt that I’ve got the best group of people behind me in order to come up with solutions and fix it and extract performance.”