James Allison believes missing the majority of Friday practice for the Chinese Grand Prix will not have too much of a negative effect on Mercedes.
Mercedes managed a combined total of just six laps during a disrupted and rain-hit opening practice session, before second practice was abandoned altogether without a single wheel being turned on-track after poor weather conditions in Shanghai prevented the circuit's medical helicopter from being able to land at the local hospital.
While the lack of running means all ten Formula One teams now head into the rest of the weekend relatively blind having not been able to complete their usual qualifying and race preparation and set-up work, Mercedes technical director Allison does not feel it will have a big detrimental impact.
"Missing Friday means we go into qualifying and the race not knowing as much about the tyres as we'd like," Allison said. "For example how long they will last and what the performance difference is between the compounds -- and those data are the basis for your race strategy. We'll miss the time for set-up tweaking to fine-tune the balance as well, but these days you arrive at the track with a pretty good balance so we shouldn't be hurt too badly.
"The nature of modern Formula One is that, even if it's wet in practice, we limit the amount of running because you don't want to spin off or damage the car and be on the back foot for the rest of the weekend. So most of the time when the drivers use the Wet tyres it's a voyage of discovery for them -- and that's where you see their ability really come to the fore. We are fortunate that, in situations like this, our two drivers have the skills to limit any disadvantage. Saturday should be the best of the three days in term of weather but Sunday is looking quite troublesome."
Valtteri Bottas -- who completed four-timed laps in first practice -- echoed Allison's comments and played down concerns his team are on the back-foot going into Saturday.
"It's just how the weather goes and now as a team we just have to make the most out of the time available," Bottas said. "We'll need every lap we can get in, no matter in which conditions, to get all the data we can, for the dry and for the wet and react to the weather. We need to do some long runs in FP3, in case the race is run in the dry, to know how the tyres behave in the longer runs with higher fuel loads. It will be a mixture of different kinds of tests.
"There's nothing to worry about, we are in the same boat with the other teams and drivers. We need to go with the weather and with the decisions the FIA is going to make regarding running, in terms of what sessions we're going to do tomorrow and on Sunday and we'll go from there."