Even though I do agree that optimism needs to be tempered… That’s quiet the stretch of interpretation about the interview, Lando never said anything about the season as a whole, his comment is:
“If it's not going to be good here, there are a lot of other tracks that are similar to Bahrain, so just as a package we've got to improve. We'll see what we can do tonight and approach it for tomorrow.”
“If” been one of the key words… And this is a development race, even if they start at the back this weekend, it doesn’t mean that they will struggle all season long.
The reality is that they probably still need to find the right setup for the tires to be in the operating window and that simply takes time, they aren’t that far off and most of the losses in time are clearly on the power sensitive portions of the track (the telemetry and sector times show that)… Unless the car is a drag monster or Mercedes has the weakest PU, the car itself doesn’t seem to be that far in terms of handling.
