Preparations for the new F1 season get underway in full swing this week with Bahrain hosting a 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:three-day test across♔ February 23-25, one week before the opening race of the 2023 campaign. 

With the🦂 regulations remaining relati🦄vely stable following last year's major overhaul, pre-season testing has been cut from six days down to just three. 

Mercedes spent much of 2022 trying to get to the bottom of their troubled W13 car which was plagued by severe 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:porpoising and bouncing, but𝄹 are hopeful their W14 will propel them back into F1 title contention. 

The team completed a shakedown of their brand-new car last week at Silverstone with 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Lewis Hamilton and 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:George Russell saying the first run had 🤪gone “smootꦗhly”, despite speculation online that there had been early technical gremlins. 

But Mercedes technical director Mike Elliott has admitted to being concerned that a sing꧋le, three-day test will not provide sufficient time to discover and iron out any major issues with their new challenger.

“We never really got ൩on☂ top of the car balance last year,” Elliot said. 

“All the noﷺrmal work we do at the beginning of the season didn’t happen because of the problems we were trying to rectify.

“With only thr🥂ee day🐻s of testing this year, that has two big impacts.

“The first is in relia🅷bility. If we are not reliabl𒆙e in the test, then we will have very limited mileage to learn. We also won’t be able to measure the car’s absolute reliability too much, because over three days you are not going to get huge amounts of running.

“These ca𓆏rs are now so reliable that you need more mileage than three days to really start seeing some of ꦅthe issues.

“The second big impact is that we’ve got to u♍se our limited time as efficiently as possible. We’ve got to learn as much as we can, to work out how to get the most performance out of the car and what we can learn to fe♓ed into the next developments.”

Russeꦗll believes teams should be allowed to run two cars in testing to make up for the lack of track time. 

“Personally speaking, I don’t think three days is enough,” he said. “You𝓡’ve got to remember from a driver’s perspective, that is one-and-a-half days per drive🍎r. We were fortunate to do the [tyre] tests last week but, had we not, that would have been getting on for 12 weeks out of the car from Abu Dhabi to Bahrain.

“I think three days with two cars would probably be a good place to be, and I think that would probably be the best compromise for alꦦl of the reasons why they’re trying to limit it. But right now, one and a haꩵlf days per driver I think is too few.”