Mercedes confident wing issue can be solved for second F1 test day

The German car manufacturer had looked set for an encouraging opening day of pre-season testing on Tuesday before a broken front wing pitched Hamilton into the barriers.

The damage to the car forced Mercedes to finish its running early, and it launched an investigation into what happened.

Although the team has declined to elaborate on the exact area of the failure, executive director Paddy Lowe said work would proceed through the night find out why it had broken.

Jerez test day one report

Even though there were no answers yet, Mercedes was hopeful that it could resume running at some point on Wednesday morning - even if new parts had to be flown out to Spain.

"We know where it failed and we are trying to understand exactly why the margin was not sufficient in that area," Lowe said.

"These are things we test extensively and model a lot of work in the laboratory, so it is a confusing situation for us.

"We are working hard this afternoon and through the night to come up with a solution for tomorrow.

"It is not a great way to go through our first day of testing, but we are working hard to recover.

"It is difficult to recover on day one when you don't have a lot of spare parts around us, but we intend to be out there tomorrow morning and we are working hard through the night to do that both here and in the UK."

Lowe said the wing failure had been especially hard to deal with because the early morning running had been so encouraging.

"It was going very well," he said. "We have the advantage of having been to Silverstone on Friday, so we were well placed to get out this morning right on time.

"There were a few issues which we hadn't expected, but in general it was going well.

"We were building up to longer runs and it was at that point that we had the failure.

"It was shaping up to be a very good day and as it was we still achieved a lot."