Mercedes may have re-written the rules on pre-season testing first-day mileage with Lewis Hamilton completing an astonishing 156 laps at Barcelona, but the defending Champions are not resting on their laurels as they push to pull further away from the field.
According to autosport.com, Toto Wolff commented after the opening day of testing for the 2016 season: “I think we are having some bits which are maybe slightly unusual. I’m not sure whether they come on the car tomorrow or after tomorrow, it depends on how the analysis of the data from today goes”.
Three-time World Champion Hamilton was only second quickest to the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel, however, the British driver was amazed at how well the day went and even described that he “never had a day-one like today”. Whilst it’s difficult to read into testing programmes and lap-times, Hamilton had some near perfect consistency in longer runs and will be looking forward to trying the experimental parts heading to the car later this week.
Wolff added: “[There are] certainly some things to look at, when I saw it the first time I was pretty surprised by the new bits in the car. Our target for today was to do lots of laps, lots of mileage to collect data and to check various systems and correlation before we head into the next phase.”
Nico Rosberg gets his first taste of the W07 tomorrow and on Thursday with Hamilton returning on Wednesday. Mileage is even more crucial this season with only eight pre-season testing days compared to the usual twelve the sport has become accustomed to.
