George Russell says Mercedes’ new Formula 1 car already feels “more pleasant” than last year’s problematic W14. After trying out the new Mercedes racer for the first time at a film day in Bahrain at the beginning of the week, Russell was allowed exclusive use of the car on the first test day of the pre-season on Wednesday.
Despite ending the day in a modest 12th place, 2.765 seconds behind Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, Russell says initial feedback from the car provided some positive first impressions. Most encouraging is the fact that the new W15 appears to have gotten rid of the “vicious” rear-end nervousness that troubled it and Lewis Hamilton last season.
At the end of the day, Russell concludes: “Overall, the W15 feels more comfortable than last year’s car. We know that it’s not about the feel, but about the speed. Nevertheless, today was about learning and not about the “We’re concentrating on ourselves in this test and only next week will we see where we stand compared to the others.”
Wolff: We now have a stable basis on which we can build
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff explains his team’s approach, which, as is often the case during test drives, initially appears to be using a lot of fuel. When asked how Mercedes ranks in the rankings, he said: “It’s very difficult to say. We had a film day yesterday and a few aero runs this morning with no relevant lap times.”
“But so far the feedback from drivers has been: ‘Yes, this is something we can start working with’ and that’s encouraging. We have had [2023] a car that was difficult to handle and sometimes difficult to understand why it did what it did. And I think that’s been the focus for this season: having a stable platform from which we can continue to develop. We’ll see if we have that.”
With a total of 121 laps on the first day of testing – only Verstappen with 143 had more – Russell feels Mercedes have made a solid start, especially after opting to run a full race simulation in the evening: “Right from the start we had “We feel like we have a good foundation.”
Red Bull not worried by Mercedes
“We did a lot of laps and have a lot of data to evaluate tonight. We finished the day in a pretty good position and can build on that over the next two days. We will focus on maximizing mileage to learn and not hunting for an optimal sweet spot with the car.”
It’s difficult to assess Mercedes’ competition after its slow start. “Mercedes? I don’t know what they did,” says Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko. “Certainly they are faster than what they showed. They didn’t put new tires on when the temperature dropped and they were obviously running a completely different program. But we can be confident.”