Toto Wolff has conceded he thought Mercedes would have “a little bit more pace” in qualifying for the F1 season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.

Wolff saw his drivers qualify third and ninth for Saturday’s race as 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Max Verstappen stormed to pole position.

168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:George Russell qualified a superb third, just over 0.3s off Verstappen, while Hamiltoꦕn struggled for pace through the three qualifying segments.

The seven-time world champion blamed a setup change, focusing more on the race, as to why he underp෴erformed relative to Russell.

Speaking to Sky Sports after the session, Wolff said he “hoped for more” in qualif๊ying⛄ after a 1-2 finish in second practice on Thursday.

“I think P3 is OK. We thought we had a little bit more pace,” he𝐆 said. “0.3s off pole. Yesterday it looked better but we put the car in a sweet spot for tomorrow’s race - at least that’s what we hope🃏.

“With P3, P9, i🎃t’s so close the gaps. I would have hoped for more.”

On Hamilton’s pace specifica💧lly, he added: “Just tiny margin🌟s.

“You get the tyre in the optimum 🌜window. It’s just a two-tenths difference and then you’re right in the game.”

There were some suggestio🌞ns after practic🍸e that Mercedes were running their engines more aggressively in practice hence their headline times in FP2.

However, Wolff refuted t💜hat claim, citing setup changꦰes.

Difference, turn the engines up early?

“No, I think the setup changes contributed to today’s performance. At the beginni𒉰ng of the qual꧂ifying we thought ‘oh, we’ve taken too much performance off’, sacrificed for tomorrow’s race but at the end we got it quite OK with George,” he explained.

“Tomorrow should be better but w𒅌e’re 🍷learning about this car.”