F1: Mercedes W14 'made progress' during final day of pre-season testing in Bahrain
- Heinrich Griessel
- 27 February 2023
Mercedes have made progress in refining their setup ahead of the Bahrain F1 Grand Prix, after a promising final day of pre-season testing.
The team's engineering chief Andrew Shovlin confirmed that the W14 appears to be in a much better place after some adjustments made over the weekend.
"A fair bit of work took place overnight to find some refinements to the car specification and recover our direction on the set-up," Shovlin said.
"We do seem to have made progress; both drivers felt the car was in a much better place across the range of conditions today [Saturday] and the balance is closer to what they require on a single lap and long run.
"It's clear that we still have work to do on car pace but [Saturday] 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."
Shovlin's optimism was shared by Mercedes driver George Russell, who reckons they are now moving in the right direction in terms of setup.
"We had a much more positive day today, we took a step forward and made progress with the issues we faced yesterday," Russell said.
"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."
The 2023 Formula One season kicks off on March 3 when Bahrain's first practice session gets underway.
