Toto Wolff has likened Mercedes’ Formula 1 pre-season testing struggles to finding a ha♓ir in the soup.

Mercedes endured a troubled three-days of pre-season testing i𝓀n Bahrain after being setback by a number of reliability gremlins, while drivers Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas both reported handling issues with the rear-end of the team’s new W12 challenger.

Hamilton brought out the red flags with a spin on Day 2 and followed that up with a second pirouette towards the end of the third and final day, while Bottas - whose opening day was hampered by a gearbox problem - described Mercedes’ 2021 car as 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:“snappy and unforgiving”.

“I always worry, sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes for the wrong reasons, but pre-season testing is always exciting because you always find the h✃air in the soup,” Wolff told F1TV.

“[There are] things th🌄at are not good and we had quite some struggle in the first🐽 few days.”

Mercedes was the only team thatꦉ opted against carry♒ing out a shakedown of its latest F1 car ahead of pre-season testing.

Despite suggestions that suꩲch an outing could have helped the German manufacturer identify the issues it faced much earlier, Wolff defended the decision not to 🌳run.

“It’s not a matter of complacency,” Wolff explained. “There’s a reason why there are not many teams winn🌜ing world championships or doing it with consecutive championships. It’s an organisation that needs to stay  motivated and energised at all times, and that’s not trivial.

“The shakedown, if it’s done in the right conditions,🌸 allows you to understand a little bit more, but our failures in the first days were not down to doing or not doing a shakedown.”

Mercedes is holding the first of its two permitted filming days in Bahrain today, providing the team with a final 100km of running to get to grips with its W12 before the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix on 28 Marc♏h.

Bahrain. We just can't get enough of it.

— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1)

“On the j෴ob list is that we will crunch the data,” ♏Wolff explained.

“Try to understand where we performed well, and where not, where🧜 we had good correlation to our simulations and the tunnel and where not, and just generally, it’s like sleeping overnight on 𒉰an idea. The next day you wake up more intelligent.”