Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Mercedes hits MGU-K trouble

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Mercedes has become the latest team to have trouble with its MGU-K at the start of the final pre-season test.

Following Honda's well-documented problems with an MGU-K seal during the second test, Mercedes had its running halted at lunchtime on Thursday due to an MGU-K failure. With 48 laps on the board in the morning session, Mercedes failed to add to that total as Lewis Hamilton's running was cut short.

Nico Rosberg is due to be in the car on Friday, with Hamilton again driving on Saturday. Mercedes also hit reliability issues at the start of the second test, with Hamilton withdrawing due to illness before Pascal Wehrlein's running was limited due to technical issues.

Hamilton had set an impressive time on the medium tyre early in the day, but was knocked off the top of the timing screens by Felipe Massa as the Williams became the first car to dip under the 1m24s mark at the Circuit de Catalunya courtesy of a soft tyre run.

McLaren earlier brought an end to its running on day one after just seven laps due to a hydraulic leak.

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Driver line-ups for the final test

Click here for the gallery from day one of the final test

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.