- Mercedes
Plenty more to come - Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton insists there is plenty more to come from Mercedes after posting another impressive lap count on the opening day of testing at Bahrain.
Hamilton finished with 74 laps under his belt following another day where Mercedes was one of the front-runners in terms of mileage, with only Kevin Magnussen (81) and Adrian Sutil (82) posting more. On top of the mileage, Hamilton's best time of 1:387.908 left him third overall behind Nico Hulkenberg and Fernando Alonso.
Though he admits there were small issues to deal with, Lewis believes Mercedes has an exciting week ahead as they start to work on pace rather than distance.
"It's been really impressive just to see everything coming together, and to be able to come to the tests and get the mileage," Hamilton said. "Especially when everyone is showing how difficult it is with the new regulations. I'm really proud of the work that has gone on.
"In Jerez we were trying to get mileage on the car and not really focused on many things on the car, we will begin to change that now as the test gets up and running here. Today [Monday] was a test of the reliability again and that's a good thing, you want issues to come up as you don't want them to happen when the season starts.
"We had some braking issue of some sort but it will be fixed for tomorrow. It's very difficult to know where we are in terms of performance, but in terms of going the distance we are right there at the front.
"To be able to get the running that we had is great, teams are starting to catch us up a bit in terms of laps done but that's to be expected. Hopefully we can get more as the week goes on as we start work on the performance."
Once again one of the main talking points was the struggles of fellow title contenders Red Bull, as Sebastian Vettel managed just 14 laps. Hamilton is taking comfort in the fact that Mercedes-powered McLaren also managed an impressive stint, though he is refusing to draw conclusions on anyone else just yet.
"It's too early to judge other teams but the good thing is at the moment if you look at the timetables at this time everyone at the top is Mercedes so that's a positive. I'm disappointed the car didn't go further but when you look take a step away and look at the whole picture we are at the top of the mileage counter.
"We have to be happy where we are currently, if we don't focus on the other teams then that is a huge bonus."
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