Valtteri Bottas says it is easy to say Mercedes should have carried out a shakedown of its new car after it lost almost half of the opening day of testing in Bahrain to a reliability issue. Mercedes was the only team not to do any running with its new car before heading to the one and only pre-season test, with Ferrari and Haas carrying out a filming day at the same venue on Thursday. That approach backfired for the defending constructors’ champion when Bottas was confined to the garage for the majority of morning due to a gearbox issue. “I and the entire team were looking forward to getting on track,” Bottas said. “On the first lap, the installation lap, we realized there was an...
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