Mercedes boasts 'solid foundation to build on' despite encountering final day issue

Over the course of the past three days, Mercedes cars completed the most laps on the Bahrain International Circuit. One session was, however, cut short after Kimi Antonelli stopped on track.

Shovlin explained: "Unfortunately, our final day of pre-season testing wasn't a perfect one. We suffered an issue on the Power Unit side which curtailed Kimi's running at 49 laps."

The issue did not hurt George Russell's programme during the afternoon. "Despite that though, we did a good job of getting the car out relatively early in the afternoon and overall, we were able to complete a lot of useful work with both drivers. We kept the focus on set-up items and long run consistency today, which allowed us to cover quite a bit of ground."

While Mercedes Toto Wolff called Red Bull the benchmark prior to this week, the Austrian team boss backtracked on his claim in Sakhir.

Shovlin cannot yet predict how the upcoming F1 season will go. He concluded: "The competitive picture still isn't truly clear, but we know that we have plenty of work ahead as we finalise our preparations for Melbourne. We've put together a solid foundation to build from, looking forward to the challenge ahead, and excited to see how the W17 performs when racing."