Hamilton: Mercedes has 'good platform' to start from

Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes isn't quite where it wants to be after three days of testing in Bahrain, but insists the team has a good base to build from moving forward.

After a disrupted end to its second day of running at Sakhir when a technical issue halted George Russell's programme, Mercedes enjoyed a trouble-free final session on Saturday.

Russell ran in the morning while Hamilton took over in the afternoon, the pair logging a combined 148 laps across the day.

Russell swept through various tyre compounds during his stint while Hamilton followed up with long runs on Pirelli's C3 tyre before switching in the early evening to the supplier's softer rubber and setting the second fastest lap of the day on the C5 rubber.

"It has been an interesting few days here in Bahrain," said the seven-time world champion.

"There has been a lot of discovery and the whole team has approached it with the same mentality, working hard, not being complacent and staying focused.

"We're not quite where we want to be but it's a good platform to start from. We don't know where we will be next week, but we will stay positive and continue to push to the maximum."

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Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said the Brackley squad had put itself back on the right path in terms of its car's set-up after working overnight.

"We do seem to have made progress; both drivers felt the car was in a much better place across the range of conditions today and the balance is closer to what they require on single lap and long run," said Shovlin.

"It's clear that we still have work to do on car pace but today has given us a much more coherent picture of where we need to focus our efforts.

"We'll be using the time ahead of next weekend to go through the data we've collected, and aim to extract a bit more lap time."

Russell echoed Shovlin and Hamilton's comments, acknowledging that Mercedes was in a better place ahead of next week's opening race of the 2023 season.

"We had a much more positive day today," he said. "We took a step forward and made progress with the issues we faced yesterday.

"I believe we have improved the car over the course of testing and got the W14 in a much better window today.

"There is still plenty of work to do but we're in better shape for next week with more to come."

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