Homework for Mercedes: 'It's clear where we need to focus our efforts'

The winter test in Bahrain did not go smoothly for Mercedes. Apart from George Russell's problems on the second day of testing, the team struggled to get the balance right. There was an improvement on the final day, but Andrew Shovlin acknowledges that Mercedes is not yet where it wants to be.

Mercedes worked through the night to refine the car's specifications and also to get the tuning back on track. "We do seem to have made progress; both drivers felt the car was in a much better place across the range of conditions today," Shovlin said in a Mercedes press release.

Homework for Mercedes

Moreover, the balance better matched what Russell and Lewis Hamilton need, both over a single lap and in the long runs. In terms of pace, however, Mercedes still has work to do, according to both the drivers and Toto Wolff. Shovlin concurs with those words.

"It's clear that we still have work to do on car pace but today has given us a much more coherent picture of where we need to focus our efforts. We'll be using the time ahead of next weekend to go through the data we've collected, and aim to extract a bit more lap time," Shovlin said.