Lewis Hamilton has expressed his excitement at the developments made with his Mercedes W14 ahead of the 2023 season and believes his team have 'hit the nail on the head' in terms of fixing the problems that plagued them last year.
Mercedes spent most of the season well off the pace, as porpoising issues, among others meant that both Red Bull and Ferrari were able to leave the Silver Arrows in their wake.
Hamilton cut a frustrated figure for much of the season as he struggled to get to grips with a difficult car, one that caused him physical pain to drive at times, putting strain on his back and neck.
He said: "Everyone's been working so hard over these past months. People naturally working so hard at their desks and then this past week has been so excited because you're seeing all these elements that they've been working on in the virtual world, brought into into reality," said Hamilton, speaking to Sky Sports.
"We've had these problems that we faced last year and we've gone round and round around trying to understand what those are and how we can fix those. We won't truly know until we fully get in the car, but we believe we have hit this hit the nail on the head in some of those areas.
"Some of them we'll still have to work on. But yeah, and this is the most exciting period of time. We're in Silverstone, the sun is is up here in February and this is a day that there's only two of us out of almost 8 billion people that get to drive this car. And so, I feel so privileged and then therefore just incredibly excited."