Mercedes fans worried about upcoming F1 season after George Russell’s session ended abruptly: “Funeral of W14 came early”

The Mercedes F1 team had a 'disastrous' end to the second day of official pre-season testing in Bahrain after George Russell stopped on the track.

The British driver had to pull over his W14 after suffering a hydraulics issue late in the evening. The halt meant that Mercedes lost valuable time repairing the car and lost time to gain more data about their car.

F1 fans on social media too were left disappointed by the W14's hydraulics issue, with many even calling it time on W14 even before the first race of the season. One fan mentioned that the issue was the 'end of W14', stating:

"The funeral of the W14 came early?"

Another fan was sad about the W14 coming to a halt and stated that the new car won't be remembered by the fans, adding:

"RIP W14 Feb 15 - Feb 24 2023, You won’t be remembered."

Here are some more reactions:

“We’ve not had a strong second day" - Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin mentioned that the second day of pre-season testing did not go their way. Speaking to The Race, he stated that stopping on the track wasn't ideal for the team. Shovlin said:

“We’ve not had a strong second day. Stopping on track with a reliability issue wasn’t great and we have struggled to get the car balanced well across the changing conditions. We’ve got some investigations going on to understand why this has been such a challenge today when yesterday it was fairly straightforward."

“That work will continue into the night and no doubt we’ll understand more come the morning. It will be interesting tomorrow to see if we can understand the drop in performance and mitigate the lost track time.”

George Russell also stated that the team haven't tapped into the full potential of the W14 yet. When asked if he expected to be in the title fight, he said:

“We haven’t unlocked everything yet in the W14 and everyone is working hard to do so and maximize our final day of testing tomorrow. I think we definitely believe eventually we will have a car capable of getting in that fight. Whether we are going to have that next weekend in Bahrain, I think may be a bit of a stretch."

It will be interesting to see if Mercedes can bounce back on the final day of testing and head into the first race of the season next week with some momentum.