After Mercedes outpaced rival Formula 1 teams by eight tenths in Australian Grand Prix qualifying, Lewis Hamilton expressed concern about the German constructor’s engine advantage.
George Russell was dominant on Saturday in Melbourne, topping all three segments of qualifying as Mercedes’ gap to its competition increased throughout.
Russell ended up taking pole by 0.293s over team-mate Kimi Antonelli; their closest challenger, Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar, was 0.785s adrift.
Ferrari was even further away, with Charles Leclerc 0.809s slower than Russell in fourth, while seventh-placed Hamilton was 0.960s off the pace.
Asked about Mercedes’ newfound, seemingly unstoppable supremacy, a puzzled Hamilton said: “I don’t understand it exactly. They didn’t show that they could turn it up in testing and now they’ve got this extra power from somewhere and we need to understand what that is. I hope it’s not this compression ratio thing, hopefully it’s just pure power and we’ve got to do a better job.”
The Briton is referring to the internal combustion engine’s compression ratio, which has been reduced to 16:1 for 2026, but Mercedes found a loophole with its ratio expanding in hot conditions, while the FIA’s compliance test is run in cold, static conditions.
“If it is the compression ratio [creating this performance gap] then I’ll be disappointed that the FIA have allowed that to be the case,” Hamilton added. “It’s not to the book, and I’ll be pushing my team to do the same thing so we can get more power.”
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images
The compression ratio, however, will be controlled in both cold and hot conditions from 1 June onwards, the FIA has ruled. But Hamilton is skeptical, suggesting this is too late.
“If they have a few months of that, then the season’s done – I mean, not done, but seven races, a few months, you lose a lot of points with a second behind in quali,” the Ferrari driver said, though the seven planned grand prix could shrink to five, with the ongoing Iran war jeopardising the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian rounds.
As far as his own performance was concerned, Hamilton was disappointed to end up seventh in Q2 and Q3 after taking third in Q1, just three tenths away from Russell.
“It’s been a great weekend up until Q2 basically, and the car was feeling good, really happy with the car and everything,” the seven-time world champion commented, before referring to a Q2 lap – in which he went fastest in sector one before backing out – as a turning point: “Then we got to Q2 and we basically lost power so we then ended up having to come back in.
“On the medium tyre we were looking solid, and then when we ended up going back out, [we] ended up behind more people, losing more temperature in tyres, and then we just got out of sync and we just didn’t get great laps out there.”
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