James Allison, Chief Technical Director of Mercedes-AMG Motorsport, is satisfied with the progress made by the Brackley-based team over the eight days of pre-season testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Spain.
The team covered 132 laps on the final day of the second test, with Valtteri Bottas driving in the morning session and Lewis Hamilton in the afternoon session.
The team did 1190 laps during the course of the eight days of testing, even as chief rival Ferrari topped the timesheets consistently. On the eighth and final day of testing, the reigning world constructors’ champion unleashed some qualifying laps. Hamilton finished just 0.003 seconds slower than Sebastian Vettel.
According to Allison: “It was a nice final day. We’ve waited for a number of days to run on the softer rubber and have a look at the car in its Melbourne spec.
“We’re reasonably pleased because we had a good balance with both drivers and both set competitive lap times. But we’ve got plenty of work ahead of us before Melbourne.”
After being pronounced as being definitively behind their rivals Ferrari after the first test, the team brought major aerodynamic updates to the second test.
Allison was satisfied with the progress made and said: “We can look back on eight days of testing where the car has been very reliable, where we’ve made steady progress throughout those two weeks with the performance and the set-up.
“We’ve run through a huge range of the procedures and tests that we need to complete in order to be ready for the first race of the season. All in all, it’s been a very long, very tiring but successful test.”
The first race in Australia will show what the true pecking order is at the start of the 2019 Formula 1 season.
