Hamilton and Bottas give first comments after trying out the W11

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© Wolfgang Wilhelm for Daimler AG

Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton had the opportunity to try out the their new 2020 car, the Mercedes W11, for the first time today. Here are their comments.

Valtteri Bottas took to the track first and wasn’t disappointed by the new machine.

“I just did my first few laps in the W11, it was pretty cool to be the first one to drive it,” said the Finn.

“Initial feeling is good and everything works – that’s a start. Nothing really wrong with the car at this point obviously as its just checking the systems and making sure everything works and getting the first feel for the car.

“It’s a good feeling, I’m sure there’s still lots of feedback I can give to the guys and lots of data to go through in the next few days before testing and to make some improvements before Barcelona.

“But to see the W11 alive and the team has done so much work to get to this where we can just go straight out from the box. I’m really proud to be driving that and getting the feel and I’m proud of every team member.

“A good day and I couldn’t ask for a much better Valentine’s Day than this and now I’m looking forward to testing,” concluded Bottas.

You can watch Bottas’ comments below.

The second one to go out on was Lewis Hamilton, who liked his first outing with the “familiar” car.

“I’ve just come out from being on the track. I’ve been doing this a long, long time but every time you get in, the excitement is exactly the same, if not more,” Hamilton said..

“The car felt great. Obviously there’s so much work that goes into building this car, you’re only one of two that get to drive it.

“So you’re really trying to pay attention to your surroundings, the seating position and feeling you’re getting back from the steering column and balance, a little bit of the balance you’re trying to get a feel for.

“But it’s not that easy with the track not being perfect. But it all ran smoothly, we won’t really know until we get to testing how good of a machine it is in terms of how big of an improvement it is.

“But it didn’t feel like a big departure from where we were in Abu Dhabi, so that’s a good start,” concluded the Briton.

Here’s a video of Lewis’ comments:

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