The Team made positive progress with the W14 and logged significant mileage as pre-season testing came to a close in Bahrain. With George running in the morning and Lewis taking over in the afternoon, the drivers combined to complete 148 laps across the day.
Date: Friday, 23 February 2023
Driver: George Russell (AM), Lewis Hamilton (PM)
Circuit: Bahrain International Circuit
Circuit Length: 5.412km
Laps Completed: George 83, Lewis 65, Total 148
Distance Covered: George 449.196km, Lewis 351.780km, Total 800.976km
Best Lap Time: George 1m31.442s (C5), Lewis 1m30.664s (C5)
Following extensive work trackside and at the factory, initial running focused on evaluating the overnight changes. George then set about a programme focusing on tyre compound comparisons, using the C5 tyre to set a fastest lap of a 1m31.442s. A long run programme utilising the C1 and C2 compounds followed before Lewis got behind the wheel of the W14 for the afternoon. Beginning the post-lunch work with long runs on the C3 tyre, he then mirrored George’s tyre compound compare from this morning. The Team’s fastest lap time of the test was set as night fell; Lewis putting on the C5 compound to set a 1m30.664s.
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director
A fair bit of work took place overnight to find some refinements to the car specification and recover our direction on the setup. We do seem to have made progress; both drivers felt the car was in a much better place across the range of conditions today and the balance is closer to what they require on single lap and long run. It’s clear that we still have work to do on car pace but today has given us a much more coherent picture of where we need to focus our efforts. We’ll be using the time ahead of next weekend to go through the data we’ve collected, and aim to extract a bit more lap time.
George Russell
We had a much more positive day today. We took a step forward and made progress with the issues we faced yesterday. I believe we have improved the car over the course of testing and got the W14 in a much better window today. There is still plenty of work to do but we’re in better shape for next week with more to come.
Lewis Hamilton
It has been an interesting few days here in Bahrain. There has been a lot of discovery and the whole team has approached it with the same mentality, working hard, not being complacent and staying focused. We’re not quite where we want to be but it’s a good platform to start from. We don’t know where we will be next week, but we will stay positive and continue to push to the maximum.
Additional information, entire press article(s), directly from its original source: Daimler AG
