Date: Friday, 24 February 2023

Driver: Lewis Hamilton (AM), George Russell (PM)

Circuit: Bahrain International Circuit

Circuit Length: 5.412km

Laps Completed: Lewis 72, George 26, Total 98

Distance Covered: Lewis 389.664km, George, 140.712km, Total 530.376km

Best Lap Time: Lewis 1m33.954s (C3), George 1m33.654s (C3)

A disrupted second day of pre-season testing in Bahrain saw the Team’s afternoon programme curtailed owing to an hydraulic failure. Prior to that, the Team completed close to a century of laps, gathering valuable data and adding learnings to yesterday’s running.

Lewis logged 72 tours of the Bahrain International Circuit across the morning session. The hotter ambient and track temperatures made conditions tricky, with the Team focusing on understanding the overall car balance. George took over the W14 for the afternoon starting with aero rake work. Attention switched to balance checks as dusk fell, prior to a planned programme of long runs; George using the C3 tyre to set his fastest lap of the day, a 1m33.654s. With 26 laps under his belt, and 90 minutes left in the session, the aforementioned hydraulic failure ended the Team’s day prematurely during George’s first long run.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

We’ve not had a strong second day; stopping on track with a reliability issue wasn’t great and we have struggled to get the car balanced well across the changing conditions. We’ve got some investigations going on to understand why this has been such a challenge today when yesterday it was fairly straight forward. That work will continue into the night and no doubt we’ll understand more come the morning. It will be interesting tomorrow to see if we can understand the drop in performance and mitigate the lost track time.

Lewis Hamilton

It was a difficult morning. The hot temperatures made it challenging with the tyres overheating, as we often see here in Bahrain. We got through our run plan though and it was good to get that mileage in. Everyone is working incredibly hard, staying focused, and we’re discovering everything we can about the W14. We’ve got lots of work planned for the final day of pre-season testing tomorrow.

George Russell

Unfortunately, we had an hydraulic issue this afternoon which cost us some running. Even though we didn’t complete our full programme, we uncovered some interesting things in the data throughout the day. That is a positive and we will analyse these overnight with the aim of finding lap time. We haven’t unlocked everything yet in the W14 and everyone is working hard to do so and maximise our final day of testing tomorrow.