Kimi and George Conclude First Week of Testing in Bahrain

• The final day of the first Bahrain pre-season test came to a conclusion on Friday.

• George and Kimi split the driving duties, with both focused initially on single lap work before switching their attention to race simulations to end their weeks.

• George topped the times in the morning session before Kimi surpassed this in the cooler conditions of the afternoon.

• After two challenging days to the start the test with several reliability issues affecting the team’s programme, Friday was more effective with George completing 78 laps and Kimi 64 laps.

• The team will now analyse all of the data gathered over the course of the three days before the second and final pre-season test gets underway next Wednesday (18 February).

George Russell

We’ve enjoyed a much more productive day in Bahrain than the previous two have been. That was important given how much running we had missed on days one and two. We were able to work through some single lap and high fuel running, completing a race distance to end our morning.

We’ve struggled with reliability this week and our performance hasn’t been where we want it to be. Today, the car felt better balanced than previous days and our pace was reasonable. That said, it is clear that our competitors have looked much stronger than they did in Barcelona and that we have work to do to catch them up. We will put in the hours ahead of next week’s second and final pre-season test to improve and hopefully we can get closer to our rivals ahead of the first race in Melbourne.

Kimi Antonelli

It’s been a difficult test for us as a team, particularly on my side. We have encountered several reliability issues that meant I only managed just over 30 laps across the first two days. It was therefore a good afternoon today where it was really my first time properly getting to grips with the car here in Bahrain. We were able to complete a good amount of single lap work and then came close to finishing a race simulation.

Whilst this week has been frustrating, it is much better to have these issues now and be able to work through them, rather than them happening during race weekends. The team is already working through solutions to some of our problems and we can hopefully come back stronger next week. Several of our rivals have looked particularly good and have enjoyed much more trouble-free running here than us. We need to try and extract more from our package and hopefully can begin to make up some of our gap during the second and final pre-season test.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

We had our strongest day of this first test today but still spent far longer in the garage than we would have liked. We have not achieved what we wanted to during this first test and a good amount of work has now shifted into next week’s second and final test. That is frustrating but all part of testing; it’s important to face these challenges head on before the season proper starts.

Pace wise, we made solid progress today but the W17 has been harder to keep in a happy window here compared to Barcelona. We have a decent baseline to take into next week but it’s clear that some of our competitors, who have had a smoother first test, are in a better position than us and that we have work to do to catch up. Hopefully we can begin to do that during the second test next week.