Reigning World Champion Lewis Hamilton came up against ‘hurdles’ as he got behind the wheel of the W10 in the second week of pre-season testing on Wednesday in Barcelona.
Hamilton took charge in the afternoon session, with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport team focusing on race simulations.
He completed 102 laps with the new technology as he got to work settling into the silver arrow F1 car.
Eyeing up a sixth World Championship, the British driver shaved almost two seconds of the time he set on Tuesday, finishing Wednesday’s session with a time of 1:18:943 on the C3 compound tyres.
After Tuesday’s issues with Valtteri Bottas suffering an oil leak in the W10, Hamilton revealed the team faced more hurdles, despite the increase in pace.
He said: “We got a lot of laps today which is a good thing, but we’ve come across a few little hurdles.
“We’re just working our way through them, trying to be as diligent as possible trying to understand the causes – which is exactly what testing is for.”
Mercedes brought a new aero package to the second week of testing and their times notably improved in Wednesday’s session.
British driver Hamilton finished ninth on Wednesday but with two days left of testing before the season opener in Melbourne, he insisted there’s a lot of work left to do.
He added: “Everyone is working flat-out and I’m sure we will get there. You need days like this to be able to bring light to the things that we need to work on.”
