Whilst the final day of pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit has gone smoothly for Mercedes, the Silver Arrows appeared to be in a spot of bother following the second day, with the team having been spotted having what appeared to be an emergency meeting.
Following Friday’s running, pictures quickly circulated on social media showing Toto Wolff, Lewis Hamilton, George Russell and a few engineers having a vital discussion, after the car stopped during the second day.
Mercedes had enjoyed a positive opening day to pre-season testing, only for reliability issues to hamper their running on the second day of running.
Russell was at the wheel of the W14 when it suddenly came to a halt following a hydraulic problem, with the car’s pace having been disappointing.
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The 25-year-old ended the second day in 13th, whilst Hamilton was three-tenths slower than his team-mate.
Whilst lap-times are somewhat irrelevant, Mercedes were clearly seen to not be happy, with their late meeting having been evidence of that.
“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,” Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said.
“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.
“It will be interesting tomorrow to see if we can understand the drop in performance and mitigate the lost track time.”
Balance was certainly an issue with the W14 on the second day, with Wolff having commented that the car was clearly “leaving tyre marks on acceleration”.
“The car is out of balance this morning,” Wolff told F1.TV.
“And you can see in the driving, leaving [tyre] marks on acceleration. It’s hot and we just didn’t find the right set-up for these conditions, which is part of the learning, I guess, with a new car.”
Russell confirmed after day two that the team failed to “complete our full programme” following the hydraulic problem, which saw the W14 lifted onto a recovery vehicle.
The former Williams driver remains hopeful, though, with the side having “uncovered some interesting things” despite their issues.
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“Even though we didn’t complete our full programme, we uncovered some interesting things in the data throughout the day,” Russell 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.”