Icy cold conditions and the prospect of snow in Barcelona led the hour lunch break to be cancelled and as a result Mercedes tweaked their driver schedule by cancelling Lewis Hamilton's run in the car in the afternoon sting and keeping Valtteri Bottas on duty in the cockpit.
With the hour break scrapped it made sense to not do the driver change, intended for the lunch break so that the team could maximise the extra hour afforded the teams during the second day of Formula 1 testing at Circuit de Catalunya.
Hamilton explained, "With the weather conditions being up and down and the loss of track time we had yesterday, it made sense to keep Valtteri in the car this afternoon. Having run in the morning, he was comfortable in the car already and we would have lost about an hour of running time with the driver switch."
"With no real understanding of whether good weather was coming or not, I took the decision to sacrifice that time in order for the team to gain better understanding of the car by going through the run plan," added Hamilton who will be in action in the W09 on Wednesday.
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