After the “groundhog greeted” Mercedes in Bahrain qualifying, Toto Wolff simply said “no” to the prospect of one of his drivers winning the Grand Prix.

He is, however, hoping for a top-three result. But so too is Fred Vasseur.

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Oscar Piastri will start Sunday’s 57-lap Bahrain Grand Prix from pole position after McLaren set the pace in all three segments.

But while Norris was left searching for answers after Q3, Piastri celebrated his second career pole position. The Australian driver was 0.168s faster than George Russell with Charles Leclerc a further two-tenths down.

Hours later, Russell and Leclerc swapped places when the Briton was penalised for heading to end of the pit lane before the FIA had communicated an official restart time following a red flag for Esteban Ocon’s crashed Alpine.

His team-mate Kimi Antonelli suffered the same fate, dropping from fourth to fifth on the grid as he swapped places with Pierre Gasly.

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It was, however, still a solid qualifying for Mercedes; they just didn’t have the pace to challenge McLaren.

“The groundhog greets us every day,” Mercedes team principal Wolff conceded to Sky Deutschland.

“We talk about tyres and temperatures. When it gets cooler, it’s better for us. When it’s hot for McLaren. So it always swings in both directions.”

“In Q3 we understood where we needed to have the tyre,” he added, “and then the grip was there.”

Asked whether his drivers could take the fight to McLaren for the victory with Lando Norris set to line up P6 on the grid, Wolff replied: “No.

“There will be little to be done against the McLaren. But podium would be a nice goal.”

But the Mercedes team boss isn’t the only team principal wanting to leave Bahrain with a podium position.

Ferrari’s Leclerc is set to join Piastri on the front row of the grid after Russell’s penalty with Lewis Hamilton also inside the top ten, although he’s down in ninth place.

When he was asked whether a podium would be possible, Ferrari team boss Vasseur said: “It’s always possible, and starting from third, we need to be ambitious.

“The problem for everyone is that we didn’t do many long stints with the tyres, but so far, we’ve seemed to be in good shape for long distances. We need to do a good job.

“We have an extra set of medium tyres, and we hope that will be an advantage. Two-stop strategy? Yes, but we’ll see.”

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