‘Mercedes yet to show their hand’

Nico Rosberg has admitted his Mercedes team had not shown their hand so far in pre-season testing in Barcelona.

The German and team-mate Lewis Hamilton have done more laps than anyone but not come close to setting the fastest times on any of the days so far.

But Rosberg said: “We haven’t shown our cards yet. We’re still holding back —and for sure the car is quick.

“The opposition also seems to be quick, so how quick we are nobody knows for now but we’re confident.” Mercedes have done more than a third more laps than any other team over three days at Spain’s Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya, but Rosberg and Hamilton were only fifth and eighth fastest in the list of times yesterday.

They were in similar positions on the first two days. Rosberg, 30, said Mercedes were mainly concentrating on reliability at this stage of testing.

“We need to push the car to its limit in order to find little problems,” he said.

“At some point something will break and for now we need to keep on going to find out where the little weak points are.” — BBC Sport