For the first time in this week's opening testing session of the 2017 Formula One Championship season, things didn't go to plan for the Mercedes F1 team.
Three times world champion, Lewis Hamilton was meant to complete the morning wet weather test, however, the W08 EQ Power+ suffered an electrical fault which saw him sit out the entire morning.
Therefore, teammate Valtteri Bottas jumped into the car in the final hour before the lunch break at 13:00, managing nine laps and adding another 59 in the afternoon to take his total for the day to 68 laps before the pit lane closed on this opening test session at 6pm.
During his afternoon run, Valtteri completed the team's first laps on the new Pirelli Wet and Intermediate tyres before rounding off the test with tyre analysis on the dry compounds.
“Unfortunately the day was a little bit shorter than we were hoping for but overall it has been a very good four days for us in Barcelona. As a team we really made the most out of this week- we've done a lot of mileage and I learned a lot,” Bottas said. “Today we did some good running on the extreme wets and the intermediate tyres, before crossing over to the slicks.”
“It was interesting to test in the damp track conditions and we got some very useful information about the intermediate tyre. We ended the day completing long runs on the slicks, to build up our understanding of the tyres ahead of Melbourne. I've really enjoyed working with the team this week. Once again, all the mechanics and engineers have done a great job, and thanks to everyone at the factory, because the car has run so well.”
Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport completed a total of 558 laps (2,597km) this week in Barcelona and will return to the track next week forr the second pre-season test of 2017.
