Reigning World Champion Lewis Hamilton says he opted to “sacrifice” his planned test run on Tuesday in order to boost Mercedes’ programme in cold conditions at Barcelona.
As per Monday’s schedule, Valtteri Bottas was due to drive the W09 in the morning session, with Hamilton taking over in the afternoon.
However, freezing temperatures disrupted the early hours of the test, and the time taken to switch between drivers would have cost an hour – theoretically when the track was at its best.
As a result, Bottas remained in the W09 through Tuesday’s running and finished second to Sebastian Vettel, completing 94 laps.
“With the weather conditions being up and down and the loss of track time we had yesterday, it made sense to keep Valtteri in the car this afternoon,” said Hamilton.
“Having run in the morning, he was comfortable in the car already and we would have lost about an hour of running time with the driver switch.
“With no real understanding of whether good weather was coming or not, I took the decision to sacrifice that time in order for the team to gain better understanding of the car by going through the run plan.”
On his day in the car, Bottas said: “We made the most out of the day. In the morning, we focused on aero work with different aero rakes on the car, running various tests.
“In the afternoon, I was doing long runs and we also worked on the set-up.
“It was quite tricky in these temperatures, but we managed to get some work done and found some answers to our testing items.”
