KEY POINTS

  • Mercedes boss Toto Wolff opens up about the team's problems this season
  • Lewis Hamilton suffered a spin during the second day of pre-season testing
  • Hamilton admits he and Mercedes are still trying to find the "sweet spot"

After finishing the first two days of testing, Mercedes CEO Toto Wolff had identified the team’s biggest obstacles.

Over the weekend, Mercedes made progress in Formula One pre-season testing in Bahrain. The team had a much better end-result on Saturday than last Friday despite Lewis Hamilton’s Turn 13 spin, BBC Sport reported.

However, Mercedes boss Wolff is still not pleased with his team’s start, pointing out they have been incompetent compared to the previous years.

"We've had a terrible start this year, unlike other years,” Wolff recently told Sky Italia (via GPblog.com). “We are not fast and we have reliability problems, but it is a situation where we have to show how we react to something like this.”

"It does scare me,” he continued. “We haven't changed the gearbox design, but we have seen two problems. That's alarming because we risk not being able to finish a race, but also in terms of costs."

Hamilton’s spin on Saturday was a rare occurrence. But Wolff isn’t worried about the seven-time world champion as he emphasized that Mercedes’ “biggest problems” this season are mostly car-related.

Lewis Hamilton said the problem of racism was not confined to America
Lewis Hamilton said the problem of racism was not confined to America AFP / JOHN THYS

Hamilton finished fifth on the timesheet, and it can be recalled that late on the final testing day, he appeared to be winding up for a flying lap which resulted in his second spin of the weekend.

Weighing in on his rare mistake, Hamilton explained that there are certain factors that affected his performance which he “found out” later in the test.

"Today the wind I think did a 180 so the track is a lot different today and there are some places you can push where you couldn't push yesterday,” Hamilton told reporters after the session. “And it's very gusty, as I found out into Turn 13. ”

Nevertheless, Hamilton remains positive about this season and bared that he and Mercedes are closely working together to come up with the best strategy.

"The rear doesn't feel particularly great with this new regulation change, but we're trying to find the sweet spot," the 36-year-old admitted. "It pretty much felt the same, not really much different today [Saturday]. I think the track feels a little bit better so the balance was perhaps slightly better, but we're still working through certain things."

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