THE FIRST Friday of the Formula One season in Bahrain saw both Mercedes drivers run two sets of medium tyres in the first session. In the hotter conditions, Lewis Hamilton finished P10 and George Russell P11, conducting set-up evaluations.

Hamilton ended the second parctise session in P8 with George P13. The Team’s long-run performance later in the session was a little more encouraging, but still significantly behind pacesetters Red Bull.

Over night, the Mercedes team said the work would be focused on set-up improvements to improve single-lap performance while maintaining the relatively stronger long-run pace.

Hamilton admitted he was a lot further off the front runners than he initally thought. Following the session he said: “We knew we were behind some of our competitors at testing and today, we found out that we are a long way off.

“We’ll keep our heads down tonight, go through the data, and continue to work to find some progress for tomorrow. We’ve got to find out if we can add performance overnight. I think I’ve got the car to the best place I can set-up wise.

“On long-run pace, we look similar to Ferrari but are behind Red Bull and Aston Martin. It’s difficult for everyone and it’s not where anyone in this team wants to be. Everyone continues to work so hard and is so courageous and thoughtful in the process.

“We need to continue to graft away and get ourselves back on the right track.”

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director added: “The first session in the hotter conditions was tricky; we ran the medium tyres and even in the test we were finding that compound difficult to get into a good balance window but today seemed little better.

“We made some changes going into the afternoon and the cooler conditions seemed to help in terms of the feel and balance, but the pace is still lacking; single lap seems more of an issue than the long run but neither are good enough, so we’ve clearly got some work to do.

“We’ve got some ideas to evaluate overnight so hopefully we can put together a package of changes that will help.”

Progress made as Mercedes testing ends