Lewis Hamilton confirmed that he was feeling a lot happier in regards to the new Mercedes than he was with final 12 months’s mannequin, after he got here out on prime of Thursday’s second observe session for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
“I am feeling a lot happier with the automotive than final 12 months,” he stated after the top of the one hour observe. “We have made some good enhancements and it feels way more like a race automotive.
“It is a actually good platform for us to construct from, we simply must preserve our heads down and preserve chasing,” he added.
Hamilton’s finest time of 1:30.374s was two tenths faster than his workforce mate George Russell, adopted by Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz.
Purple Bull’s Max Verstappen stays favorite to win this weekend’s season opener regardless of being solely P6 in as we speak’s night session, virtually half a second slower than Hamilton.
“The automotive was feeling good however we will not get forward of ourselves,” cautioned Hamilton. “We did not know precisely the place we might stack up in opposition to everybody else, however we had a optimistic FP2
“We all know there’s extra to extract, and our long term tempo is not within the struggle with the Purple Bulls,” he added.
That sentiment was shared by Russell,” who stated: We’re not going to get carried away after in the future of observe.
“Our qualifying tempo did look robust, however finally our long term tempo is the place it counts. Verstappen regarded comfortably quickest, and it was very tight with the Ferraris, the McLarens, and the Aston Martins.
“We have possible acquired an actual struggle on our fingers there,” he steered.
“Nonetheless, we’re happy with how our day has gone; the automotive is performing effectively. We are going to sit down and perceive the place the primary enhancements got here from and attempt to maintain that. We need to be preventing for good positions on Saturday.”
Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovelin admitted that after final week’s three-day official pre-season check at Bahrain Worldwide Circuit, the workforce had been most involved about its single lap tempo.
“We had each drivers within the simulator earlier than returning right here,” he revealed. “From the working as we speak, it appears to be like like now we have improved.
“We’re actually not getting carried away, as there’s loads of scope inside energy unit modes and gasoline hundreds for a number of vehicles to discover a chunk of time earlier than tomorrow nevertheless it’s encouraging that the image we had final week appears to have improved.
“The long term information additionally appears to be like shut,” he added. “Verstappen continues to be comfortably out entrance, as we noticed final week, however behind him it should be a decent battle for the remaining podium spots.
“We all know we have loads to positive tune on the stability. It is nonetheless early days with the W15 and we’re studying the right way to get lap-time out of it. Nevertheless it’s already feeling very completely different to the final two years that now we have been right here.”
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