Bottas fastest on Saturday, but foresees plenty of work still to do for Mercedes

Valtteri Bottas was the fastest man in yesterday's afternoon test session. He knows that this says little about his team's performance and that the Silver Arrows still have plenty of work to do on the final day in Bahrain.

Mercedes haven't had the best start of the season. The balance and optimal set-up for the 2021-car still remains to be found. Bottas is aware of this and in his post-season press conference he summed up his session.

"I finally managed to get some laps and some clean runs to really learn about the new car and try some things. It's always good when you learn and that's what testing is all about - the opportunity to run different things and see how the car reacts.

"As a driver you use that information in a race weekend so it's hugely important. If the set-up changes work or don't work, it's all valuable information.With the new tyres, it's quite sensitive so we need to calm the car down a bit," Bottas said.

Fastest on Saturday

Bottas recorded the fastest time of the afternoon run yesterday on the soft Pirelli C5. However, the Finn is not focused on this, he explained: "It's so difficult to say what it means. I can't be jumping around happy - it is only testing. As always, we are just focused on getting through our programme and maximising the learning. You never know what fuel loads people are running. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow, we will have a better idea of where we are."

Bottas continued: "Testing is limited and a lot more compromised this year for everyone, you have less time in the car before the first race so I would be happy if we could just get through the final day tomorrow nice and clean. Today felt good and the times were pretty fast, so I just want more laps and more feeling with car."