It's 'not ideal' says Hamilton after Mercedes hit reliability problems in Formula One pre-season testing

Mercedes

It's 'not ideal' says Hamilton after Mercedes hit reliability problems

Only 14-laps on the clock for Hamilton in the penultimate day of testing

Sam Hall

Thursday 27 February 2020 19:33

Lewis Hamilton completed only 14-laps of running on the penultimate day of pre-season testing as reliability problems continue with the Mercedes power unit - Williams also suffering with a lack of reliability from their Mercedes unit.

Hamilton may only have completed 14-laps of what appeared to be a race simulation, but says that the laps that he did manage felt good.

"I only got 14 laps in today, but during those 14 laps, everything was feeling fine," said Hamilton. "It's obviously not ideal that we didn't get a full day of running in and we experienced this issue, but there are lots of learnings to take from today.

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"Rather than looking at the negatives, we've discovered some things we need to work on, and we'll keep pushing hard to resolve them and keep working away. I'm looking forward to being back in the car tomorrow morning and adding to the mileage we've already achieved."

In the morning session, Valtteri Bottas had been on driving duties and the Finn also suffered power unit problems - the repair job seeing Hamilton forced to sit out the first hour of the afternoon session before completing his limited running.

"Obviously, the running today in the morning was slightly limited with the wet weather," said Bottas. "But we got a couple of runs in with the intermediate tyre, which is always useful. We had a good feeling on that tyre in those conditions and gathered some good information.

"The session was slightly disrupted by red flags, so we missed some of the test items we planned to do. However, we still completed a few good long runs and set-up work - so got some decent mileage in. I have one afternoon left in the car, which I'm really looking forward to.

"I feel pretty ready to race. We had a few issues here and there, but the team is working on resolving them and we'll sort everything out for tomorrow."