It was also something of a reality check for Mercedes,who were only the third-quickest team after Red Bull and Ferrari.
George Russell finished fifth and Lewis Hamilton seventh,some 47 and 50 seconds behind the race winner. That was four seconds closer to the Red Bull than this time last year. But given last year’s season-opener was so disastrous Mercedes wrote off their entire car concept,this was pretty worrying.
The mood afterwards was quite different,however. Wolff explained that an engine cooling issue had cost the team up to half-a-second a lap,insisting the team would otherwise have been able to fight the Ferraris.
There was some evidence of that. Russell,who started third,had climbed as high as second with an outside pass on Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc on lap four to sit just 1.7 seconds behind Verstappen.
But his impressive start was undone by having to switch focus to nursing a power unit issue caused by a cooling miscalculation,which required lifting-and-coasting measures to combat rising temperatures. Hamilton was also hurt,with the seven-time world champion hampered by a cracked seat.
“When we started the race on the soft tyre,everything pretty much[was] to plan,” Wolff said. “And then,unfortunately,we had to start pulling the engine more than we expected. We can’t understand yet where that came from.