Mercedes happy with mileage gained

In stark contract to Red Bull Racing and the Renault powered teams, Mercedes appear to be getting on reasonably well with the new 2014 regulations.

During the first winter test session in Jerez, the Mercedes powered teams of Mercedes-AMG, McLaren, Williams and Force India completed 2,407 miles during the four-day test session.

That was over a thousand miles more than the Ferrari powered teams of Ferrari, Sauber and Marussia and almost two thousand more miles than the Renault powered teams of Red Bull Racing, Toro Rosso and Caterham [with Lotus missing the first test altogether].

On day one of the second winter test session in Bahrain, it was much more of the same.

With Mercedes, McLaren, Force India and Williams completing 238 laps [931.5 miles].

Ferrari, Sauber and Marussia completing 149 laps [583.2 miles].

And Red Bull, Lotus, Toro Rosso and Caterham completing 95 laps [371.8 miles], with 68 of those laps completed by Caterham.

But despite the solid start by all the Mercedes teams in Spain, Williams struggled with only five laps completed in Bahrain on Wednesday and 2008 Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton has talked down Mercedes apparent advantage.

‘It’s been really impressive just to see everything coming together and to be able to come to the test and get the mileage, especially when everyone’s shown just how difficult it is with these new regulations,’ he told Sky Sports.

‘Whilst it looks like we’re doing lots of laps, it’s still a massive challenge for us and we’re still coming across issues and things that we’re finding out about the car. It looks like other people are having issues and some perhaps bigger than others.’

‘When I say we didn’t get as many laps as we’d like, we know the car can go further. But of course when you take a step away and you look at the whole picture we are at the top of the mileage. So I’m really, really happy with that.’