Mercedes endured its toughest pre-season since the introduction of the Hybrid Power engines seven years ago and left Bahrain as the team with the least laps completed over the course of the three days of running – only 304 laps between Hamilton (154) and Bottas (150) – while AlphaTauri, Alfa Romeo and Ferrari all completed over 400 laps in the same period of time. For Bottas, it was really important that, “we made a decent recovery. I can’t say that we fully achieved the mileage, we wanted to get into three days, but actually not that far off. On Saturday I felt like we made 95% most out of it, and on Sunday I would say 100%,, because we had a really solid day with a good amount of laps and quality laps and quality tests. So, considering what happened, day one, day two, day three went I’m pleased for that. This team is like no other, no detail is left unchecked, so I’m confident in the team and in the car.

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