Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas spent much of the pre-season testing and opening weekend in Bahrain trying to get to grips with the new Mercedes W12, which was struggling with an unstable rear end following changes in vehicle floor design regulations.
Hamilton narrowly beat Red Bull rivals Max Verstappen to victory in Bahrain but had no illusions about the struggle Mercedes faced to make up the deficit and have the fastest car again.
But Mercedes got back in shape in practice on Friday at Imola, when Bottas led Hamilton to a 2-1 win in both races one and two.
Verstappen finished third in FP1 0.058 seconds behind and ended up in 14th place in FP2 after a drive shaft problem ended his session after just five laps.
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Although there was no exact comparison with Verstappen, Bottas was pleased with the improved feel of the W12 in Imola after “losing” the number of setups sampled in the simulator for the weekend.
“If I compare how the car feels to Bahrain this weekend, it definitely feels better, so that’s nice,” said Bottas.
“As I said yesterday, it’s a different track and a different type of circuit and surface and grip levels, but at least the weekend started on a positive note and the car really wasn’t far in terms of the setup.
“There are still a few things to do, but overall [with] All in all, I’m much happier with the car now than I was three weeks ago. “
Bottas said there were still some problems that Mercedes had to solve with the W12 in Imola, but was nevertheless pleased with the progress made.
“It feels better – still the same kind of problems, but less,” said Bottas.
“So it’s still not perfect, but we’re only at event two of 23 this season so hopefully we’ll have enough time to fix it.
“But at least we can really feel that we’ve made progress, that’s good.”
Repeating Bottas’ thoughts, Hamilton believed that Mercedes’s progress was based on a combination of their own work and Imola that is better suited to the W12’s strengths.
“The team has definitely worked very hard to understand what happened in the last race, where we were weak and where we can try to make the car a bit better with the setup,” said Hamilton.
“But I think the track went a little bit more in our direction.
“We started with a really good setup and only made small changes here and there, but no major problems. Good pace for us so far. “
The seven-time world champion, however, remained hesitant about how competitive Red Bull could be after the team had a difficult day running at Imola.
“I think we haven’t seen the best of the Red Bulls yet,” said Hamilton.
“You look like you’ve had some pretty messy sessions with traffic and it will be pretty interesting to see how fast you are tomorrow.”
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