George Russell writes off 'little-to-nothing' high as Mercedes pound out the miles

George Russell dismissed as "little or nothing" to be read into Mercedes table-topping times on a day when he and Kimi Antonelli delivered another astonishing lap count.

Mercedes opened the five-day private test at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya with an impressive total of 151 laps between its two drivers. On Wednesday, it improved its tally to 183, with Russell logging 92 and Antonelli 91.

In total, across the two days, Mercedes has clocked 334 laps, or 1,555 kilometres, the equivalent of five Spanish Grands Prix.

In addition, Antonelli and Russell were comfortably quickest, with the young Italian posting a time of 1:17.362s on the softs, two-tenths of a second faster than Russell. At this early stage, however, they effectively mean nothing.

Assessing his second day behind the wheel of the W17, Russell said: "Everything went relatively smoothly from a reliability perspective, so that is good for our overall programme.

"This test is all about getting mileage on the car and making sure everything functions as it should. That was the case today as Kimi and myself were able to put a large number of laps in again."

Highlighting the conditions he was forced to operate in, however, Russell said: "The track temperature was in the low single-digits this morning, one of the coldest circuits I’ve ever driven on, so there’s little-to-nothing you can read into the times.

"The excitement lies ahead once we head to Melbourne and get a sense of where we stack up against our competitors.

"For now, we are putting in the hard work and enjoying the process of getting ready for the season ahead. We’ve still got one more day of running we can accomplish, which may be tomorrow, but will depend on the weather.

"We’ve got more work we want to do, and we are in a good place to run on Thursday, but we will only do so if we are confident it will be dry."

Antonelli highlights 'only real goal'

Antonelli, who experienced the worst of the track conditions on Monday, was at least relieved to get a full session of running under his belt.

"It was a better day on my side than Monday, where the wet track in the morning limited my running," said Antonelli. "We were able to run a full race distance this afternoon, building our mileage and getting lots of data for the team to work with.

"This car is completely new and a big difference from last year, so I’m getting more used to it with every lap we complete.

"It's constant learning for me as a driver and the team, too, so accumulating as much mileage as we can is very useful.

"We have completed our programme on both days so far. That is the only real goal of this shakedown, and hopefully our third and final day of running goes smoothly.

"That may be tomorrow if the weather looks to be dry; whatever the conditions we face either tomorrow or Friday, though, we are focused on adding to our mileage and putting ourselves in the best possible position before we head to Bahrain."