Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes‘ trackside engineering director, is confident with where the Silver Arrows are at after a week of testing.
Mercedes completed more laps than any other team in Bahrain just weeks before the 2026 season gets underway.
Shovlin said: “Unfortunately, our final day of pre-season testing wasn’t a perfect one. We suffered an issue on the Power Unit side which curtailed Kimi’s running at 49 laps.
“Despite that though, we did a good job of getting the car out relatively early in the afternoon and overall, we were able to complete a lot of useful work with both drivers. We kept the focus on set-up items and long run consistency today, which allowed us to cover quite a bit of ground.
“The competitive picture still isn’t truly clear, but we know that we have plenty of work ahead as we finalise our preparations for Melbourne. We’ve put together a solid foundation to build from, looking forward to the challenge ahead, and excited to see how the W17 performs when racing.”