Mercedes is currently near the bottom of the lap times in Barcelona, completing only 143 laps – the second-fewest of any team. Only Aston Martin has logged fewer laps with 134 over the first two days of testing.
“We’ve had another frustrating day here in Bahrain,” admitted Andrew Shovlin on Thursday, explaining, “Kimi missed the entire morning session as we detected an issue with the power unit.”
“Replacing the entire power unit was quicker than replacing the affected part. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to secure George back on track until an hour into the afternoon program.”
The team lost a significant five hours of the eight-hour testing window. “We’re still playing catch-up with setup work following the problems [from Wednesday], but we at least managed to get the car into a reasonable window by the end of the day,” Shovlin stated.
The focus on Friday will be to “catch up on the lost time,” he announced.
