Lewis Hamilton’s bid for a record-eighth Drivers’ Championship could start to look shaky after Mercedes admitted that they had endured a ‘difficult morning’ on the second day of testing in Barcelona.
Hamilton came within one-lap of becoming the most successful Formula One driver of all-time in last season’s finale in Abu Dhabi.
The controversial decision by Michael Masi to allow Max Verstappen to unlap himself on the final lap allowed the Dutchman to win the race.
With the pair neck-and-neck on points going into the last race, Verstappen claimed the title by just eight points.
And going into the new season, it is expected that they will challenge again.
But according to Mercedes chief Andrew Shovlin, the Silver Arrows still have a long way to go to find the perfect package with just weeks before the new season.
“We had a difficult morning with Lewis, experiencing a data logging issue that delayed our start and in general, we were struggling a bit more with the balance,” the Mercedes Engineering Director said.
“Some of that may have been setup items that we were trying and some of it the harder tyres that we were running today.
“We managed to get a few runs completed then unfortunately had a sensor issue that prevented us doing further performance work, so we stopped early for lunch in order to fix it”
New driver George Russell, who joined Mercedes in the winter from Williams, had a ‘more productive’ testing session than his team-mate.
He still had issues around the track, but Shovlin is hopeful of better things to come on Friday.
“George had a more productive session in the afternoon and we got through some useful setup scans and completed some of our tyre programme,” he continued.
“We’ve still got plenty of issues to work on from a performance point of view but we are continuing to learn with every run which in turn will make us faster.
“We’ve got a busy day planned for tomorrow, plenty more setup work and a first look at some of the softer rubber compounds for this year.”
More doubt has been cast on Mercedes winning their ninth-consecutive Constructors’ Championship with Ferrari and McLaren impressing on the second day of driving in Barcelona.
Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris, both of McLaren, raced to the top of the leaderboard, with Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz also producing a strong run.
Meanwhile, Verstappen may also be wary of the new season after team-mate Sergio Perez had gearbox issues which led to the first red flag of testing.
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