“So there are no excuses this year. I feel that we have everything. There’s
nothing to fall back on and say, ‘this is the reason why we didn’t win in
2012’.” Button will certainly have enjoyed his team-mate’s assessment of his
two days in the cockpit.
“To have completed more than 1,000km in the past two days is incredibly
encouraging – the whole team should feel proud,” Hamilton said last night.
“The car behaves really well in the high-speed corners – I think the
baseline of our car is higher than it was last year – and it’s better
overall at high speed.
“We don’t know the fuel-loads of the other cars, so it’s still hard to
determine the pecking order. We didn’t bring any upgrades here, but our
understanding of the car has developed since the test in Jerez.
It’s been an extremely productive few days – and I think Jenson will continue
to improve the car tomorrow.”
Force
India’s Nico Hulkenburg went quickest on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, reports in Germany suggest that Mercedes have offered Michael
Schumacher a new two-year contract which would tie the 43 year-old
to the team until the end of 2014.