Did the Mercedes F1 team really struggle during the preseason or not?

Sebastian Vettel is questioning Mercedes claims that they were struggling during the pre-season after the champions smoked the rest of the field during Friday practice for the F1 Australian Grand Prix.

Throughout testing, Mercedes consistently claimed that they were struggling to keep pace with Ferrari or even Red Bull but practice for the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne painted a very different picture as Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas topped the charts.

“What was all their bulls–t about ‘oh we’re in such bad shape’ and so on?” asked Vettel at the end of the day. “I didn’t understand that to be honest.”

Vettel ended the day fifth, behind both Red Bulls as well as the Mercedes duo and only just ahead of the Alfa Romeo of former Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen.

“I don’t know if it was just us struggling a bit today or also others,” said Vettel. “But as a matter of fact, I think they were in a league of their own. Maybe everyone else was struggling and then we can turn it around.

“But yeah they look certainly very strong and much stronger than they claimed before the weekend.

“At this point I think we are all flat-out trying to understand what happened in the session, the things that we tried, how we changed it and so on. I don’t think it was an awful session, I think here and there, there were bits that were really good, and we can build on so now it’s about stringing it together and have a better day tomorrow.”
 

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