Mercedes facing a “dogfight” in Bahrain - Wolff

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has predicted this weekend’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix will be a “dogfight” between the Silver Arrows and Red Bull.

Max Verstappen led the way in both of the Friday practice sessions for Red Bull but whilst Mercedes’ pre-season struggles continued Wolff believes the performance differences are minimal.

“The conditions haven’t come towards us," conceded Wolff. “It’s just a real dogfight.

"When you overlay the fastest laps and even the long runs, it’s just so very close that every kilogram in fuel load can make quite a big swing. We don’t really know.

“I think we are definitely closer here than we have been in testing but I wouldn’t know where to position us versus Red Bull.”

This year, teams had just three days of pre-season testing, half of last year's six days of running, and to add to the challenge the Friday practice sessions have now been cut from 90 minutes to 60.

Valterri Bottas was second in FP1 when conditions were at their hottest, 0.298secs behind Verstappen with Hamilton more than half a second off the pace.

At the end of the more representative FP2 in which Verstappen was again quickest, Hamilton finished 0.235s adrift in third, with Bottas fifth, nearly half-a-second back.

Asked how his team could improve before qualifying, Wolff said: “I think tyres there is not a lot you can do, so it is set-up work.

“You can see that the long runs for many competitors, the McLarens, the Red Bulls, have been pretty flat, so there was not a lot of degradation, and with Valtteri we have seen that we have lost it a little bit.”

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