On a weekend where Mercedes have finally solved their porpoising issues, it has allowed the team to finally get a better marker of where they stand in F1 this year.

Upgrades this weekend for the W13 seemed to have worked pretty well. Lewis Hamilton qualified P6. However he was just over a tenth off teammate George Russell who’ll start 4th tomorrow.

While admitting to MotorLAT and other media outlets that the team has made progress overall, Hamilton conceded that Mercedes are still struggling with proposing in a couple of corners around the Spanish venue.

“Yeah… I mean I’m in the same position as I was in the last race but we are progressing.

“We don’t have the bouncing in the straight line which is a huge difference, but we still have some bouncing in turn 3 and turn 9… so we’ve still got improvements to make but the car is a lot better.”

“At least in Q2 we were quickest so that’s a glimpse of hope for us as a team. The qualifying wasn’t that great for me but it’s great to see us stepping forward slowly.

Expanding on his comments about a difficult qualifying session on his side of the garage, F1’s most successful driver in history explained that he is having issues getting to grips with the 2022 Mercedes and is unsure how he’s going to solve it.

“My teammate is fourth so that means the car should be at least third or fourth, and I am in sixth. [I am] still struggling with the car,” he stated.

“I don’t know how to get around that. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ll just continue to try and work hard and figure it out.

“I can’t at the moment [explain why Russell is faster at the present time]. I’m just struggling with the car. I just had no rear end in the car in the qualifying session.”