Mercedes has downplayed the seriousness of the electrical problem that brought Valtteri Bottas’ afterno🍰on programme to a premature 🧜end on the second day of Formula 1 pre-season testing.

The German manufacturer dominated the opening day of running in Barcelona and looked to be on course for another seamless test until Bottas encount🥀ered the team’s first reliability setback with more than an hour remaining.

Bottas ꦰreturned to the garage before the shutters were put up, indicating that all was not well before Mercedes confirmed the issue had sid🅰elined the Finn for the rest of the day.

But speaking at the end of the second day, Mercedes technical director James Allison insisted the problem was not major and would be💯 “quickly resolved”.

“We are all a little disa🐟ppointed🦩 to have taken an early bath today,” Allison said.

“But we console ourselves with the fact that the problem we encountered will quickly be resolved and🦩 we managed a healthy 183 laps before encountering it.

“That is, after all, why we go🐓 testing. It's encꦚouraging to see that, for the second day running, the car felt honest, good and reasonably speedy.

“Lewis' race simulation in the morning was tidy and Valtter🅰i's, until it was interrupted, was on a good trajectory.✅”

Despite not focusing on performance runs on day two, Mercedes still grabbed the attention of the Barcelona paddock as it debuted a new adjustable steering wheel inn🌳ovation on its W11.

Allison said Mercedes’ drivers were on a “voyage of discovery” getting to grips with the manually-operated system, dubbe🅘d DAS, which the team believes is legal.

“We also had an inte𓄧resting day activating the DAS system for the first time and we are on a voyage of discove💮ry with the drivers to learn about the system and see what it can bring us for the season ahead,” he explained.

"We’re now looking forward to🐻 the final day of the first test tomorrow and continuing to work through the tasks we have to clꩲear before Melbourne.”

Speaking about his issue, Bottas added: “Obviously running was cut short because of an issue, wಌhich made the day a bit trickier.

“It was a good day of learning more about the car. We got some good m𒀰ileage in and I almost completed a full race simulation.

“So, ther𓆉e was a lot of good experience gained from that and lots of data for us to investigate ahead of tomorrow.

“The car felt good and I'🍸m looking forward to continuing the running tomorrow morning, hopefully we will have a clean day.”

This c🍰ame after reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton had enjoyed a troub🐼le-free run in the morning as he completed 106 laps around the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

The six-time world champion said it had been one of ꦆhis most enjoyable days of testing ever and fe🉐lt he could have done another 100 laps.

“We got some g🧔reat mileage on the new car today,” Hamilton🦩 said.

“As a team, we completed a race run in the morning, which is great for re𝐆liability and shows the foundation we are st🔯arting on.

"This is probably the first day ever, that𝔉 I can remember, where I finished a test session and wanted to continue.

“We had 20 minutes left 𝓰and I wanted us to maximise and do more laps, but we'd ran out of tyres.

“It felt good today and I felt physically fantastic. To gജet through a race run and still feel at the end of it that I could do another 100 laps is a good feeling.”