Jerez, Day 2: Mercedes test report

MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS continued its pre-season testing programme at the Circuito de Jerez earlier today, with Nico Rosberg taking the wheel of the F1 W05 for the second day of running in Spain. Nico’s best time of 1:25.588 from 97 laps was good enough for fourth on the time sheets, and first in the lap count.

— Running of the F1 W05 was initially delayed, as the team awaited the delivery of parts following a front wing failure during yesterday’s session
— Nico emerged for his first run at 11:35 CET, completing two install laps before midday
— During the afternoon Nico completed a series of longer runs, with the longest a 24-lap stint on the hard tyre.
— The F1 W05 completed over 400 km and Mercedes-Benz Power Units completed a total of 212 laps between all teams.

Lewis will be in the car tomorrow for the third day of pre-season testing at Jerez.

Nico Rosberg

That was a great team effort today. We had to fix a problem on our car overnight. The guys worked through the night back at the factories and flew in the parts just in time this morning, so we were able to do a lot of mileage today which is great for our learning process. It was a great feeling to put some good miles on the new Silver Arrow and there’s a lot of new stuff to clear because it’s very different to the old car. It’s heavier, you have less downforce and the steering wheel is completely different; it’s almost like a smartphone with all the information on it! Every lap is important to get used to the new systems and it helped a lot that I have worked on this already in the simulator. We don’t know yet where we are compared to the other teams, but we can be quite happy after the first two days of testing here in Spain. Now I look forward to getting back in the car on Friday.

Paddy Lowe

The team worked very hard overnight, both at the circuit and in the UK, to recover from yesterday’s wing failure. We had a slow start to the day, waiting for components to arrive from base, but we are happy with the solution that we found. The car left the garage just before midday and after resolving some minor issues, we began our planned programme at 1300. Our objective was to put mileage on the car and we achieved a total of 97 laps without any major issues, which is a great credit to the teams at both factories and those trackside here at Jerez. We have a lot of data to analyse overnight and look forward to continuing our learning tomorrow.