Lewis Hamilton admitted that Friday in Bahrain “wasn’t a spectacular day” for 2014 favourites Mercedes but stressed that it was better that unreliability issues struck the W05 in winter testing rather than when the serious business of racing begins in Australia.
For the first time since the testing programme moved to Bahrain last week, a Mercedes driver didn’t occupy one of the top-four positions on the end-of-day timesheet on Day Two with Hamilton finishing down in seventh place after a session punctured by an early-morning spin, mid-morning ERS glitches and then finally an afternoon gearbox failure with 90 minutes of running remaining.
Speaking to Sky Sports News after eventually racking up a still-healthy total of 89 laps, Hamilton shrugged off his morning adventures – “I just had a bit of a spin, just testing out the gravel trap!” – and was sanguine about the latest time-consuming glitches to strike the W05.