Just like in Bahrain, Mercedes once again maximised its potential in Melbourne, grabbing a podium finish and a fourth place on a car that was, on average, the fifth fastest on track.

But despite the strong result, there were some moments of disagreement between drivers and pit wall, especially as the race unfolded with both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell fighting the muck quicker Red Bull of Sergio Perez.

The team’s strategy director, James Vowles has explained in a video on Mercedes’ social media channels, has said Hamilton’s radio message claiming the team had put him “in a difficult position” was related to engine cooling requirements, as the temperatures were warmer than expected on Sunday.

“That was all about engine cooling and keeping the PU cool during the course of the race. We push everything to the limit, as you would imagine, and one of those is engine cooling, and you do that by closing up the bodywork or changing the louvre design at the back of the car,” said Vowles.

“That decision is made on Saturday but obviously we are racing on Sunday, 24 hours later, and in this particular circumstance the ambient was one, maybe two degrees warmer than we had expected and as a result of that ourselves and not just ourselves, you would have heard it from teams up and down the grid were right on the limit of what the engine and the PU can take in terms of cooling requirements.

“And during the course of the race, when you are following a car it meant that Lewis had to compromise what he was doing, he had to move out of the dirty air of the car in front of him and make sure he got cool, clean air through the radiators to drop the PU temperatures down but doing that makes racing the car in front incredibly difficult and that's why his message came out.”

In the other car, Russell also expressed some frustration on the airwaves, as he was told to save his tyres and potentially give up on his fight with Perez. The young Briton said it was “not what I want to hear”. Vowles explained the instructions were based on the tyre drop-off point.

“It's a subtlety but it is an important one. It's not so much we asked George to let Perez go, we never want to give up a position. But these tyres, both the Medium but also the Hard tyre, required a good amount of management, a good amount of looking after them to make sure they can make the end of the race without dropping off the curve, we saw that happen with Perez on stint one,” Vowles explained.

Russell had to keep his tyres in check in order to finish the race safely - Image by Hasan Bratic - MotorLAT

“And the message to George was very simple: Look after your tyres and if that costs us the position to Perez on track, we don’t want it with all our heart, but it's the right thing to do. Because ultimately, getting to the end of the race on tyres that we know will make it, that covers you off against safety cars and other circumstances is the right course of action, especially given what happened on the Medium in stint one.

“We had also expected that Perez with the pace he was doing and the amount he was pushing the tyres, could well have a repeat of what happened in stint one but ultimately that didn’t happen. He pulled away from five seconds from George, actually he overtook him fairly easily in the end and there was no race there for us to have.”

The team believes it’s pace improvement in Australia was down to both track characteristics and a better understanding of its car, but it wasn’t as good relative to the front-runners as it was in the season opener in Bahrain:

“I think really the truth lies between those two factors. Track to track, definitely the performance moves up and down between Ferrari, Red Bull, ourselves, McLaren for example. You can see teams moving up and down between all of those different circuits, as the circuit characteristics, the downforce level either suits or doesn’t suit a characteristic of their car. We've also made steps and we've been trying to make steps on our car every single race to move it forward and understand it.

“In terms of where we were though in Melbourne, we have to face the reality, we were a second down in qualifying relative to Ferrari and in the race, Leclerc was in a league of his own. He wasn’t challenged by Verstappen at the restart, just a few laps in Verstappen had already dropped a few seconds back, then obviously on stint two wasn’t there and the Red Bull suffered that large degradation you saw on the Medium tyre but on the Hard were a much faster tyre.

“Bahrain ended up being still to this point in our season our most competitive race, as an example, as a gap relative to the front. Every race though that we move forward, we have a plan of action of what we need to test, try and develop on that car and I am sure all of our competitors have the same thing, but the key is this: We have to start clawing back that gap to the front.”

You ask, and we answer! 👀 James talks through all the big topics from the #AusGP weekend in our @F1 Race Debrief, brought to you by Akkodis! 👊

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— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) April 13, 2022