Toto Wolff offered a bleak outlook on the current Mercedes situation after describing the Bahrain Grand Prix as "one of the worst days in racing".
Both Silver Arrows drivers scored points in the race, but that's just about where the good news ends. Mercedes were nowhere near competitive enough and clearly have only the fourth quickest car on the grid, with Red Bull runaway leaders already and both Aston Martin and Ferrari faring better.
Wolff was in no mood to find any silver linings as he spoke to Sky Sports after the conclusion of the 2023 season curtain-raiser. "One of the worst days in racing – not good at all," he said bluntly. "We are lacking pace front, right and centre. That is a reflection of the test.
"The Aston Martin is fast, they deserve that. And the Red Bull is on a different planet. That is what hurts, because they are so far ahead. It reminds me of our best years, when we [were a second ahead] of everybody else. That is the benchmark. We need to put one step after another to come back. We can do that. We can, absolutely."
The team expects some upgrades to be ready for the car by the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, but Wolff knows even those aren't going to make much of a difference. He added: "It needs to be much more radical. More radical than just hope for an upgrade."
Assessing Aston Martin's improvement, the Austrian said: "They deserve to be where they are, because they did a fantastic job. The good news for us, is that there is a lot of Mercedes in it. So we know how to pinpoint it to recover."
Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton was similarly flat as he spoke to the media after the race. He said: "The Ferraris were just quicker than us today, we were the fourth-fastest team. It was close for a second [with Sainz] and then just couldn't hold on to him, he just kept pulling away, so did the best I could.
"We're miles off. There was a Ferrari that would have been ahead of [Alonso], so we would have really been sixth, a podium was nowhere near.
"When we did the strategy in the morning, I told the guys it wasn't going go as far as they said it was going to go, and it didn't. So we've just got a lot of work to do, we've just got to add downforce to the car, we're just lacking a lot of downforce, so that's really where the time will come as soon as we put more load on the rear and the front, and we'll pick up that pace."
