Lewis Hamilton is hoping to reward Brackley-based Mercedes for all the hard work he can see going on behind the scenes in a bid to turn the team into winners.
Hamilton completed another productive day behind the wheel of the W04 for his new team on the second day of Formula One’s second pre-season test at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya.
The 28-year-old comfortably topped the day’s lap charts with 121, with his best of one minute 22.726 seconds good enough for fourth fastest on a timesheet headed by his replacement at McLaren in Sergio Perez.
Overall, in his last two days in the car, Hamilton has now clocked up 1205 kilometres (748 miles), laying to rest the demons from his first outing when he suffered a rear brake failure that pitched him into a tyre barrier at Jerez a fortnight ago.
Impressively, Hamilton’s time was set on the hard Pirelli compound, in contrast to Perez’s time of 1:21.848s on the softs.
In between the duo were triple world champion Sebastian Vettel in his Red Bull, 0.349s behind Perez, and Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen who was a further half-a-second down on the German, both on mediums.
Overall, Hamilton is confident he and the team “are going in the right direction”.
He added: “It’s so encouraging to see the amount of work that’s going in, to see the atmosphere there (at the factory) and how determined everyone is.
“I’ve a great group of guys behind me. I’m sure they’ve been working hard over the years.
“But I’ve only just arrived and immediately I see just a fantastic determination and effort going in. I hope it all pays off.”
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