Eventually Lewis Hamilton waited for the final minutes of the first test session to place his paw. The Mercedes driver, in fact, closed the day on Friday with the best time, stopping the clock at 1’19”138, thus giving the team eight times world title the front pages of the newspapers.
Mercedes, in fact, placed both of its drivers in the first two places of the standings thanks to George Russell who, in the final 10 minutes, saw the best reference point.
The premise is a must: the times obtained in this 3-day test in Barcelona are to be taken with a grain of salt because the teams have been more committed to learning about the new ground-effect single-seaters, and the related problems of youth, rather than in the look for performance.
Mercedes has experienced some unforeseen events and it was Lewis Hamilton who confirmed this at the end of this day.
“It has been an interesting three days. Perhaps not the simplest as we had to overcome some difficulties, but we managed to do the best we could. Obviously we would have liked to have covered a greater distance, but we are happy. Today I think I have covered almost 100 laps. Not bad for an afternoon ”.
“The whole team did an incredible job this week, both the men and women in the factory and everyone on the track. Now we just have to download all the data collected and examine it next week and then proceed in the correct direction ”.
Sir Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
The turbo-hybrid era saw Mercedes dominate from 2014 to 2021. The regulatory revolution planned for this season could, however, revolutionize the values on the pitch. Hamilton said this new generation of cars is totally different from the one he was used to and it will take some time to fully understand their potential.
“The car is very different to drive than in previous years, as are the tires. We’re working on it”.
Lewis turned up his nose when he had to take to the track in the afternoon with the artificially wet track to allow Pirelli to check the performance of the wet and intermediate tires. The Englishman was then slightly unbuttoned when he admitted that he had fun in the final when he tried the time with a little fuel and the C5 tires, the softest of the entire range made available to the teams by the House. Italian.
“It wasn’t a good start to the session in those conditions, while it definitely went better when the track dried. In any case, I had a good feeling with the car with those tires ”.
Before taking his leave of the press, Lewis later admitted that he still doesn’t have an idea of where the Mercedes W13 might be found right now.
“It’s never possible in the first week, we don’t have an idea of the general values of the whole line-up”.
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