Lewis Hamilton has said that Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport‘s decision to keep Valtteri Bottas in the car throughout the whole of Tuesday was the right one.
On Monday, Hamilton assumed testing duties from Bottas in the afternoon, but failed to get a meaningful number of laps in – just 25 – due to overly cold ambient and track temperatures.
The reigning world champions were expected to keep the same agreement yesterday, however the sided against switching drivers due to the work done by Bottas in the morning. Additionally, the climax of the session saw snow which stopped running early.
Speaking after yesterday’s test day, Hamilton praised the decision.
“With the weather conditions being up and down and the loss of track time we had yesterday, it made sense to keep Valtteri in the car this afternoon,” said Hamilton.
“Having run in the morning, he was comfortable in the car already and we would have lost about an hour of running time with the driver switch.”
“With no real understanding of whether good weather was coming or not, I took the decision to sacrifice that time in order for the team to gain better understanding of the car by going through the run plan.”
The start of Wednesday’s test session was delayed by over three hours due to snowfall overnight – for now Mercedes have both Bottas and Hamilton scheduled to run over the course of the day.
