Hamilton pleased with 'really good start' to testing

Lewis Hamilton has vowed to "keep churning out the miles" following what he has hailed as "a really good start" to Formula 1 pre-season testing.

After taking over the Mercedes W11 for the afternoon from team-mate Valtteri Bottas, who had finished quickest in the morning run at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya, Hamilton went on to top the timesheet with a lap of one minute 16.976secs, 0.337s up on the Finn.

For the reigning six-time champion it was business as usual. He said: "It's been a good day and a really good start for all of us, considering we had a long break.

"So to come back and clock in over 170 laps (Hamilton 94, Bottas 79) just shows how hard everyone has been working over the winter.

"We will just take it one step at a time, getting good feedback from the car. We have a lot of data to download and analyse and we've got to keep pushing on.

"I hope everyone back at the factory is happy with how the day went and we're just going to keep churning out as many miles as possible."

Technical director James Allison echoed Hamilton's words of enthusiasm as he said: "That was a very positive start to our winter testing campaign, with both drivers able to get a very decent amount of work done through the day.

"We were able to tick several of the procedural items off our list that we need to get done before Melbourne, and also run through some of the main set-up items on suspension settings today.

"We're happy that alongside the good reliability we've shown today, both drivers have reported the car to have sweet handling characteristics and are looking forward to leaning on it a bit harder over the next several days of testing."

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