Mercedes are investigating more than just the hydraulic failure which cost them an hour and a half of running during the second day of testing in Bahrain.
The team also admitted it experienced difficulty getting its car balanced at the Bahrain International Circuit which will hold next week’s season-opening race.
“We’ve not had a strong second day,” trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin admitted. “Stopping on track with a reliability issue wasn’t great and we have struggled to get the car balanced well across the changing conditions.
“We’ve got some investigations going on to understand why this has been such a challenge today when yesterday it was fairly straightforward. That work will continue into the night and no doubt we’ll understand more come the morning.”
The team has one day of testing left to assess how well it understands its new car. “It will be interesting tomorrow to see if we can understand the drop in performance and mitigate the lost track time,” said Shovlin.
Lewis Hamilton ran early in the day when conditions at the track were at their hottest, warmer than they will be during next week’s night race. He said he had a “difficult morning” in the W14.
“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.”
While Hamilton managed 72 laps, George Russell covered just 26 after the hydraulic failure which forced him to stop. However he expects to see progress on Saturday, when the pair will share the car again.
“Even though we didn’t complete our full programme, we uncovered some interesting things in the data throughout the day,” he said. “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.”
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