Hamilton was beaten by Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin on his way to finishing as the lead Mercedes driver in fifth as F1 2023 got underway in Bahrain.
The seven-time world champion ended up just behind Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz but trailed Max Verstappen’s race-winning Red Bull by a staggering 50 seconds.
After taking the chequered flag, Hamilton admitted Mercedes have “serious work to do” to catch up to the frontrunners in an motivational radio message to his team.
“Great work, I know we’re not where we wanna be but let’s keep pushing,” Hamilton said. “Serious work to do to close the gap but I believe in you all.”
Hamilton earlier his race engineer Peter Bonnington: “How much were we off the Red Bulls?”
To which, ‘Bono’ replied: “Just uh… 51 seconds behind.”
After a disappointing qualifying on Saturday, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted his team had made a mistake in pushing on with the same car concept as last year.
Hamilton finished two places ahead of teammate George Russell, who appeared to have more pace than Hamilton in the early stages after initially dropping behind at the start.
“Is he [Hamilton] managing or is he slow? Because I feel I have a bit more pace,” Russell asked over team radio during the first stint.
Russell’s new race engineer Marcus Dudley confirmed Hamilton was “struggling” at that stage of the race.
