The first day of pre-season testing at Bahrain International Circuit introduced hope for Mercedes.
The second day? It introduced one thing a lot completely different.
Disruption.
After a primary day of testing that the group known as “productive,” permitting the group to consider that their aerodynamic points from 2022 have been nicely within the rear-view mirror, their second session on Thursday was reduce brief, and the Silver Arrows ended their day early having run the fewest laps out of all ten groups.
After Lewis Hamilton accomplished 72 laps in the course of the morning session, teammate George Russell took to the observe for Mercedes’ afternoon session. But early in his run, Russell couldn’t get the Mercedes W14 to shift out of fourth gear, and his steering wheel flashed a sign that the automotive had skilled a hydraulic failure. Russell introduced the W14 to a cease on the observe, and waited for assist to reach:
The difficulty introduced an early near Mercedes’ day.
“Unfortunately, we had an hydraulic issue this afternoon which cost us some running. Even though we didn’t complete our full programme, we uncovered some interesting things in the data throughout the day,” stated Russell after his day was reduce brief in a press release offered to media together with SBNation. “That is a positive and we will analyse these overnight with the aim of finding lap time. We haven’t unlocked everything yet in the W14 and everyone is working hard to do so and maximise our final day of testing tomorrow.”
Even Hamilton, who accomplished his session within the morning, known as the day “difficult” because the group struggled with tyre temperatures throughout his run.
“It was a difficult morning,” stated Hamilton on the finish of the day. “The hot temperatures made it challenging with the tyres overheating, as we often see here in Bahrain. We got through our run plan though and it was good to get that mileage in. Everyone is working incredibly hard, staying focused, and we’re discovering everything we can about the W14. We’ve got lots of work planned for the final day of pre-season testing tomorrow.”
Andrew Shovlin, the group’s Trackside Engineering Director, was quite blunt in his evaluation of the group’s efficiency on the second day. “We’ve not had a strong second day; stopping on track with a reliability issue wasn’t great and we have struggled to get the car balanced well across the changing conditions,” stated Shovlin after the second day of testing. “We’ve got some investigations going on to understand why this has been such a challenge today when yesterday it was fairly straight forward. That work will continue into the night and no doubt we’ll understand more come the morning. It will be interesting tomorrow to see if we can understand the drop in performance and mitigate the lost track time.”
Still, the information was not all dangerous for Mercedes. According to a piece from F1, the discuss round Bahrain amongst group bosses this week has the Silver Arrows amongst Ferrari and Red Bull because the groups to beat this season. “I think it is quite clear, because it looks like Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes are close together. The rest of the field are looking to close the gap to the front teams, and I think the midfield is quite close together,” stated AlphaTauri’s Franz Tost.
Mercedes will hope to point out extra of that type as testing concludes on Friday.