Both Mercedes drivers believe progress is being made in understanding the W10 after a strong second day in Barcelona.
Once again Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas shared driving duties with the Briton this time facing the early start, but between them, they amassed 163 laps of the Spanish Grand Prix circuit, the best of anyone.
“It’s been a good day overall,” Hamilton said on the Mercedes website. “It was quite cold in the morning, so switching the tyres on was a little bit tricky, but it seemed like a few people had similar issues.
“We were focusing on working through our run plan and we got through everything we wanted."
Known as not a great enthusiast of winter testing, that view of the world champion does appear to be changing as he delves into the task at hand.
“It’s good that we’re getting in a lot of mileage and we will try to increase that over the next days as we continue to discover the characteristics of this car," Lewis continued.
"That’s the exciting part about it – learning something new and being faced with different challenges.
“Everyone is working so diligently, I’m really happy to be here with everyone for the seventh year in a row and I’m excited for this journey that we’re embarking on.”
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It was Bottas who did the most laps of the duo, as a series of afternoon long runs saw the Finn tally up 89 tours of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
“We did a lot of laps today and again managed to complete our run plan,” he confirmed. “We’re learning a lot about the W10 with each run and we’re building a better understanding of the set-up.
“The car was better balanced than yesterday, but there’s still a bit of room for improvement, as you can tell from the lap times, we’ve been focusing on long-run work.
“I’ll be in the car tomorrow morning, so it will be a busy evening for me, taking in all the learnings from today," Bottas added.
“It’s been a pretty normal test so far; fortunately, the car has been very reliable, so that’s good news.”
