Lewis Hamilton makes his first on-track appearance of F1 2021 in very challenging windy and sandy conditions at Bahrain testing.

Lewis Hamilton has admitted Mercedes’ start to 2021 pre-season testing was “difficult” but is backing his team – who are unexpectedly playing catch-up after the first day in Bahrain – to “find solutions”.

Mercedes, Formula 1’s world champions who are so often unflappable in testing with their reliability and speed, completed the fewest amount of laps of any of the 10 teams on Day One – with a gearbox glitch in the morning particularly costly – while they were also conspicuously low on the timesheets.

Hamilton finished the day 10th, over two seconds off the leading pace set by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, while Valtteri Bottas, who only managed six laps in the opening session, was the slowest of all 17 drivers.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted it was a “stumbling block” while Hamilton, aiming for an unprecedented eighth F1 title this season, said: “These things are sent to try us. Today definitely wasn’t the cleanest of days that we had.”

Lewis Hamilton makes his first on-track appearance of F1 2021 in very challenging windy and sandy conditions at Bahrain testing.

Hamilton’s afternoon session wasn’t without its trips to the garage, either.

“Everybody’s worked incredibly hard to get us here, to be where they are,” he added. “Obviously we had that mishap in the morning which was really unfortunate for Valtteri in terms of losing his time on track.

“The guys are trying to figure out what that was and I think they did a great job to turn that around and then we had a difficult second session.

“It definitely wasn’t without its challenges but we exist to find the solutions to the problems we’re facing. We just had a good debrief and we’ll keep churning away.”

A sandstorm in the desert certainly didn’t help Hamilton in the afternoon session and the Englishman, who frequently struggled for grip, said it was “difficult to know” whether that was because of the conditions or his W12 car.

But he stressed: “We have no choice but to take positives. We have to take positives out of every day. I don’t think anyone is down about today.”

There are only two more days of pre-season testing this season, leaving Mercedes on the back foot – particularly after rivals Red Bull’s seamless start.

Hamilton said he had “10 days in the car” before his 2007 F1 debut compared to one and a half this year and expanded on the challenges: “Whilst it is the same fundamental car as last year, there’s quite a lot of changes to tyres and some of the aero mods. That’s not easy.

“But it’s the same for everyone, we’ve got drivers in new teams and that’s not a lot of time to get on top of things and it’ll be interesting to see how on top of things those drivers are in those new roles because it takes time.

“The experience I have with the nine years with this team, I like to think has some value as opposed to a newbie coming in. Everyone’s in the same boat with that challenge and we’re going to do the best we can with it.”