The third and final pre-season Formula 1 test started off today, with the shenanigans taking place at the Bahrain International Circuit for the second time in two weeks.
It was Nico Rosberg who jumped in the highly-reclined seat of the Mercedes-AMG F1 W05 single-seater for the first day, but things didn't exactly go entirely as planned over the course of the testing session.
Nico Rosberg: “That was not a fantastic day for us. We tried some new parts on the car and you find out a lot through doing that. But unfortunately we did not only discover good things today. I managed to do a couple of good laps before lunch but in the afternoon we had a few small problems which ended my running a bit earlier than planned. This shows that we are pushing everything to the limit and we still have a massive challenge in front of us during the last three days of testing. We need to maximize our time here to be prepared for Melbourne. But after a difficult day overall we are on the right path.”
The first day's program consisted of long runs and some car setup evaluation in the morning, followed by an entire array of racing strategies in the afternoon, with the team working on a number of practice pit stops and race starts.
Unfortunately, the testing session ended somewhat abruptly and an hour earlier than planned because of some unexpected technical problems with the car.
Even so, Nico managed to drive the F1 W05 for a total of 89 laps, covering a total distance of 481.668 km (just under 300 miles) and managing to post the fourth fastest lap time of today's testing session.
Nico Rosberg: “That was not a fantastic day for us. We tried some new parts on the car and you find out a lot through doing that. But unfortunately we did not only discover good things today. I managed to do a couple of good laps before lunch but in the afternoon we had a few small problems which ended my running a bit earlier than planned. This shows that we are pushing everything to the limit and we still have a massive challenge in front of us during the last three days of testing. We need to maximize our time here to be prepared for Melbourne. But after a difficult day overall we are on the right path.”
The first day's program consisted of long runs and some car setup evaluation in the morning, followed by an entire array of racing strategies in the afternoon, with the team working on a number of practice pit stops and race starts.
Unfortunately, the testing session ended somewhat abruptly and an hour earlier than planned because of some unexpected technical problems with the car.
Even so, Nico managed to drive the F1 W05 for a total of 89 laps, covering a total distance of 481.668 km (just under 300 miles) and managing to post the fourth fastest lap time of today's testing session.