F1 News
Bottas confident Mercedes will review decision not to run a shakedown
The current World Champions got their season off to a rough start. During the four-hour morning session, Valtteri Bottas completed just six laps because he was stuck in the garage with a gearbox problem. Lewis Hamilton's afternoon session wasn't completed without trouble either.
In 2021, Mercedes opted not to run a filming day prior to the testing in Bahrain. Toto Wolff said it was always wet at Silverstone which isn't ideal. However, had Mercedes had completed the 100km filming day shakedown, they might have identified the gearbox problem.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing
Reflecting on the first day of testing to F1 TV, Bottas confirmed he is confident the team will review the option not to run before the start of the official start.
"It's very easy to say afterwards, of course now yes, we would have done it before. But in the recent years everything has been pretty bulletproof, and certain things have already been run on the dyno, etc. We can say it now, but I'm sure that will be reviewed for next year," Bottas said.
The transmission problem occurred very early in the session. In fact, Bottas had only completed one lap. The Finnish driver managed to get out towards the end, but a red flag caused further delay.
"The first lap, the install lap, we realised there was an issue with the gearbox. We obviously had to localise the issue and change the gearbox, which takes quite a bit of time," Bottas explained.
"Only at the very end we got a few laps, and then it was red-flagged, and that was it. Six total laps, all with aero rakes on the car, so not much running today. Not an ideal start."