Mercedes building foundation for ‘interesting running’ in second test
Mercedes technical boss James Allison says the team has been “trouble-free” bedding in its 2019 Formula 1 challenger as its focuses on cဣreating a foundation for “all the♏ interesting running” it plans for the second pre-season test next week.
The reigning F1 world champions produced a total of 163 laps between Lewis Hamilton (74 laps) and Valtteri Bottas (89 laps) who once again split drivi🐷ng duties on day two of the first test at Circuit de Catalunya.
Mercedes technical boss James Al✨lison says the team has been “trouble-free” bedding in its 2019 Formu🥂la 1 challenger as its focuses on creating a foundation for “all the interesting running” it plans for the second pre-season test next week.
The reigning F1 world champions produced a total of 163 laps between Lewis Hamilton (74 laps) and Valtteri Bottas (89 laps) who once again split driving duties on day two of t⭕he first test at Circuit de Catalunya.
Neither driver caught the eye on the timesheet, with Bottas setting♌ a best effort of 1m 19.535s to take sixth place overall, with technical chief Allison playing down the significance of lap times in its current testing programme.
“The car was trouble-free all day and we added to the knowledge about the tyres and the car that we started to acquire yesterday,” Allison s🎉aid. “This permits us to build a foundation for the second test where all the interesting running will take place.
“We’re just two days in, but already a quarter of the way through the precious days of winter testingꦓ. Today was another very useful day for us, accumulating a lot of miles, proving out a lot of🐠 components and testing with both drivers several set-up avenues.”
In recent seasons Mercedes has often steered clear of eye-catching lap times, often accuse🉐d of sandbagging to keep F1 rivals’ guessing about its true 💝pace, with Bottas hinting the lap times remain unrepresentative of the teams’ speed.
“We did a lot of laps today and aga🌺in managed to complete our run plan,” Bottas said having driven in the afternoon session. “We’re learning a lot about the W🐭10 with each run and we’re building a better understanding of the set-up.
“The car was bett꧅er balanced ﷽than yesterday, but there's still a bit of room for improvement.
“As you can tell from the lap times, we’ve been focusing on long-run work. I’ll be in the car tomorrow morning, so it will be a busy evening for me, tak๊ing in all the learnings from today.
“It’s been a pr💧etty normal te🦄st so far; fortunately, the car has been very reliable, so that’s good news.”
