Mercedes couldn't find the balance: "We are way behind our testing program"

Mercedes, the team you would least expect this from, had the messiest test day of all on Friday. Due to technical problems in the morning, they couldn't find their rhythm for the rest of the day either. Andrew Shovlin explains what exactly went wrong.

"It's been a poor start to the season from us today", said Shovlin in Mercedes' press release. "We lost more or less the whole morning with Valtteri with a gearbox problem and our workload over lunch meant we were late joining the afternoon session with Lewis."

Valtteri Bottas hardly got a chance to drive and ended the test day at the bottom of the timesheet. Lewis Hamilton drove more laps but had the biggest problems keeping his car on the track and as a result, also failed to get a faster stint on the medium or soft tyre.

"Once we got running it was clear we didn't have the car in the right balance window and while we made some progress during the day, we're not happy with how the car is performing and it's pretty clear we have some work to do. We're quite a way behind on our test programme and need to find a bit of balance and speed but we have two days left and every opportunity to recover the situation", Shovlin still tries to end on a positive note.