The German producer enjoyed an encouraging first day of testing, however issues went awry on Friday because it struggled to discover a good steadiness with the W14.
George Russell ended the day down in thirteenth on the timesheets, two seconds off pacesetter Zhou Guanyu, whereas Lewis Hamilton was an extra three tenths adrift.
Mercedes’ efforts have been additional hampered by a hydraulic drawback that hit Russell late within the afternoon. The problem left him stranded out on monitor and reduce brief the workforce’s working.
PLUS: What we learned on day two of F1 testing in Bahrain
Mercedes has admitted to being left confused about why issues rotated so surprisingly through the second day of motion, and mentioned there was some urgency to get solutions earlier than the ultimate day begins.
Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin, who was seen in deep dialogue with workforce boss Toto Wolff after the session, mentioned: “We have not had a powerful second day; stopping on monitor with a reliability situation wasn’t nice and we’ve got struggled to get the automobile balanced properly throughout the altering situations.
“We have some investigations occurring to know why this has been such a problem in the present day when yesterday it was pretty easy.
“That work will proceed into the evening and little question we’ll perceive extra come the morning.
“Will probably be attention-grabbing tomorrow to see if we will perceive the drop in efficiency and mitigate the misplaced monitor time.”
Toto Wolff, Group Principal and CEO, Mercedes-AMG
Photograph by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Talking earlier within the day, Wolff instructed F1.TV that the W14 had not been behaving in addition to the workforce and drivers would have preferred.
“The automobile is out of steadiness this morning,” he mentioned. “And you may see within the driving, leaving [tyre] marks on acceleration. It is sizzling and we simply did not discover the precise set-up for these situations, which is a part of the educational, I suppose, with a brand new automobile.”
Requested if the state of affairs was a priority, Wolff mentioned: “Yeah, it undoubtedly is as a result of it is not the motive force who’s overdriving the tyres or pushing it, it is the automobile that does not give him sufficient grip from the rear. So that is one thing we have to type out over the course of the journey.”
Russell mentioned that the workforce was working exhausting to seek out solutions within the telemetry about what had gone incorrect.
“Regardless that we did not full our full programme, we uncovered some attention-grabbing issues within the knowledge all through the day,” he mentioned. “That may be a Positive and we are going to analyse these in a single day with the goal of discovering lap time.
“We’ve not unlocked all the pieces but within the W14 and everyone seems to be working exhausting to take action and maximise our ultimate day of testing.”