Mercedes: Hamilton and Bottas impressed with testing

Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas are feeling happy with their Mercedes car after both drivers took to the track on Day 1 of the second test in Barcelona.

Valtteri Bottas finished fastest of the two Mercedes drivers in his stint this morning. Bottas set a best time of 1:20.596 which was only enough to place him 2nd in the standings, two-tenths behind leader Sebastian Vettel.

The Finnish driver said: “The conditions today were much better than last week and we’re all really happy about that.

“We got lots of valuable data today. This morning we focused on medium to long runs, trying different mechanical setups of the car.

“We keep discovering more things about the car - the car was very reliable and I really enjoyed being back in the car and I’m looking forward to continuing tomorrow.”

The Mercedes team didn’t seem too concerned about finishing behind the Ferrari car adding speculation that they are not running their engine at full pace.

World Champion Lewis Hamilton took to the track after lunch to finally get some valuable running time after being hampered by bad weather last week.

Lewis also felt positive about the car saying: “It’s been a good day, we’ve got through everything we needed and put good milage on the car, its been productive.

“Overall it’s been a good start to the second test, although there is not a whole lot to say at this moment.

“We have not worked too much on fine-tuning the set up as we’re mostly still gathering information. In the next couple of days, once we get into the long-runs and some shorter qualifying-style runs, we will get a better idea of where the car is.”

Lewis has less than three weeks to wait until the start of his defence of the Championship crown in Melbourne.