Mercedes not convinced of productive day: 'Especially long runs were not strong'

It seems that Mercedes will not be the dominant force this year that they have been in recent seasons. If they are suddenly back in front during qualifying on Saturday, they have certainly fooled us. Even after a reasonably good Friday in Bahrain, Mercedes are still hammering away at the fact that they are behind.

"We've had a productive day," said Andrew Shovlin in Mercedes' press release. "The first session was a bit too hot to be representative but it was still useful for testing the changes we've made to the car since last week and we do seem to have improved the overall balance."

One cause, two adverse effects

That the Mercedes already looks a lot more competitive than it did two weeks ago has indeed been evident to everyone. If you continue that upward trend, they could just win the Grand Prix on Sunday. Shovlin however is far from convinced.

"We've still got quite a bit of work to do, especially on the long runs where we didn't look strong. We need more pace and better degradation in order to be competitive but both those problems are linked to the same cause so hopefully we can make some progress overnight."