Karun Chandhok offered a worrying outlook for Lewis Hamilton at this weekend's Australian Grand Prix.
Mercedes are struggling for competitiveness again this year and may have only the fourth quickest car on the grid. Red Bull are the runaway leaders already while Aston Martin have made great strides and Ferrari also seem to be a little ahead.
Hamilton has found it particularly difficult to get to grips with the W14. In contrast, his team-mate George Russell was impressive last time out in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and finished fourth in the race after finding a setup for his car which worked well.
Looking ahead to this weekend's race in Melbourne, Sky Sports pundit Chandhok sees a reason for Hamilton's side of the garage to be concerned again. He believes the younger Brit could again have the upper hand on his more experiences team-mate.
"In Lewis' case, he never got to a point in Jeddah where he was happy and comfortable in the car," he said. "He was working in his side of the pits as hard as George's side I'm sure, but they just never found that sweet spot as George did.
"That will be a bit of a concern as this track here in Melbourne was modified last year and is quite a fast layout – not quite as fast as Saudi Arabia, but still pretty quick and therefore the demands of the car aren't a million miles away from what we saw two weeks ago.
"So certainly Lewis and his engineers will be hoping to correct whatever issues they had last time out." His words came after quotes from Russell, who gave a slightly gruff response to the suggestion that his strong result in Jeddah might have been lucky.
He told reporters: "I don't think there's any luck in it at all – I think it's down to the preparation you put in before the event. The changes we made overnight, I knew that was going to be the right direction with the work we did with the team.
"And I believed it was going to be better than the setup that Lewis opted for. I think everybody's got different preferences, I was happy with the direction I took and the work I'm doing with the engineers."
