Lewis Hamilton tried to BREAK his Mercedes F1 car - Shock admission
Lewis Hamilton is looking to equal Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher with a fifth F1 title
The Briton and team-mate Valtteri Bottas took the team’s 2018 challenger for its first runs at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona across eight days.
While Ferrari were the pace-setters with the two fastest times after eight days, Mercedes demonstrated excellent reliability through their schedules of longer runs and race simulations.
And world champion Hamilton, gunning to become just the third driver in F1 history to win a fifth title this year, insists he did his utmost to try and find any weaknesses in the W09.
But he is not concerned that Mercedes will suffer any issues at the first race in Australia this weekend after such a straightforward pre-season period.
Asked if Mercedes were worried their testing was too trouble-free, Hamilton said: “I don’t personally have that mentality.
“I think in my competition you can’t have that mentality, I can’t afford that kind of mindset.”
“That’s [team chief] Toto [Wolff]’s job to take that stress. For sure he will have that stress.
“I tried to break it, I told them on the radio afterwards that I tried to do my best to break it but it wasn’t working.