Lewis Hamilton insists Mercedes' W15 F1 car is ‘amazing’ and not ‘evil sister’

Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes’ W15 F1 car is “amazing”, insisting it is not an “evil sister” of disappointing predecessors.

For the third season in a row, Mercedes have endured an underwhelming start to the campaign with disappointing results in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia lowering expectations.

Mercedes revamped their car for 2024 in the hope of closing the gap and challenging Red Bull and Max Verstappen this year, but a despondent Hamilton claimed “big changes” were still needed after finishing a lowly ninth in Jeddah last time out.

But the seven-time world champion had a more positive outlook ahead of this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix.

"It's definitely not that evil sister or anything like that,” Hamilton said in Melbourne.

“I do think we have an amazing car; it has a lot of potential in it. We just haven't maximised it at the moment through set-up.

"We're obviously not happy with the performance in those first couple of races. But I think there's a lot more potential in it that we just haven't quite extracted yet.

"So, that's what everyone's focus is on, just trying to understand the car. We're hoping this weekend is a step forward.

“A huge amount of work has gone on - everyone's heads are down in the numbers. I feel positive this weekend. We've had two not such great races, but there's a long way ahead.”

Despite appearing visibly dejected after the race in Saudi Arabia, Hamilton reiterated that he has total faith in Mercedes to get to the bottom of the problems currently hampering their 2024 car.

"I think we had a really good winter or three-day test that we had," he said. "We've made big improvements with this car - just in terms of generally driving it, it feels like a much, much better car, much more like a race car.

"But it can drop off one end or the other end. It's a narrow working window with these types of cars. I do believe that we've still got that winning mindset within the team. I have absolute faith that these guys are going to fix any of the problems that we have, we will get there.

"The fact that Max has 58 points and I have eight points after two races, if you're logical about it… you have to be conscious it's a very long season also, so things can change but it's going to be very hard to catch those guys. Their car, they drop it on the track and it just works. For us, we are really, really grinding to pick up that performance and get it to where we need to be.

"The dream and the goal is still, if we can get wins this year, or podiums this year, I think that could be really amazing. 

"To finish second in constructors last year given the issues we had with the car just shows what we can do with something that's not even perfect. So I'm hoping that we can do that again this year."