Bahrain I, Day 3: Mercedes test report

MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS continued its programme at the Bahrain International Circuit today, with Lewis Hamilton back behind the wheel of the F1 W05 for the third day of this week’s test. Lewis’ time of 1:34.263 topped the timesheets for the day and proved to be the fastest lap of the test so far.

— The programme today consisted of short runs on the softer tyre this morning, followed by an attempted race distance

— A failure on the car interrupted the race simulation late afternoon; however Lewis completed another 22 laps once fixed

— The day proved to be a good learning curve for performance and reliability, giving a good base for the final day tomorrow

Nico Rosberg will be in the car tomorrow for the final day of the second pre-season test.

Lewis Hamilton

It was nice to be able to put together a good lap today because generally speaking there seems to be less grip available than last year. I’m looking forward to completing a race simulation next week as we didn’t quite get to finish it today. We’re trying to find any issues we can now to prevent them happening during a race situation, so from that perspective it’s a positive that we were able to find and fix something again today. The car seems to be responding well to my style of driving and the power unit is looking promising, with all of the Mercedes-powered team completing good mileage. We won’t know where we are for definite until we get to Melbourne so we’re just continuing to focus on our run programmes, keep positive and look forward; the team has done a great job to get where we are today so we just need to keep that going.

Paddy Lowe

Today was a good day overall. We ran a programme in the morning looking at some of the softer tyres, which was very useful to learn a bit more about the car, especially looking at a single lap. We attempted a race distance but suffered a failure that halted this for a while. We did manage to get back out and continued with that until the end of the day to post a good amount of laps. Not a trouble free day, but we learnt a lot about the car from a performance and reliability point of view, so we can come back tomorrow in even better shape.