2025 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[r85]

Team is miles behind McLaren and Red Bull and got very fortunate with the weather calls today. Must be so painful and embarrassing to see their customer team dominate the sport, using their own engines that they put so much hard work into building and developing, they probably should've said no but given that McLaren were really nowhere at the time they probably didn't see this coming at all.

Miles behind, in these conditions. It shows the W16 doesn’t suffer from the same issues as the W15 and when it comes to cooler conditions. So, we’ll see in China with a representative session to how the grid stacks up in the dry.

Well even with Lewis driving last year...merc finished 2nd in the sprint...so that bodes well for a car that works at Australia...bogey circuit for merc

Charles and Checo were closing in on Lewis by 8 tenths every lap in the sprint. My best guess is that Mercedes will be fighting Ferrari behind the McLarens and Red Bull

[Macklaren]

Charles and Checo were closing in on Lewis by 8 tenths every lap in the sprint. My best guess is that Mercedes will be fighting Ferrari behind the McLarens and Red Bull

Agree but if Kimi can keep chipping in regularly, P2 in the WCC is not out of reach

[Jambier]

P2 is the target again RBR and Ferrari

I think there will be a great battle for P2

Championships are for McLaren for sure

[nitrotech]

It's a shame that Antonelli started from so far back. It would have been great to see what he could do in the wet if he started 5th or 6th. His onboards show a lot of confidence to push the car while it was wet.

[SB15]

Miles behind, in these conditions. It shows the W16 doesn’t suffer from the same issues as the W15 and when it comes to cooler conditions. So, we’ll see in China with a representative session to how the grid stacks up in the dry.

Well even with Lewis driving last year...merc finished 2nd in the sprint...so that bodes well for a car that works at Australia...bogey circuit for merc

Charles and Checo were closing in on Lewis by 8 tenths every lap in the sprint. My best guess is that Mercedes will be fighting Ferrari behind the McLarens and Red Bull

I still don't think Mercedes will be fighting Ferrari, they'll be much closer to the Redbull and Mclarens than you think, but I agree we'll see next week.

[Mosin123]

good race, nice drive by Antonelli and GR

[214270]

[Lasssept]

[TeamKoolGreen]

What a drive by Mr Antonelli.

I was just listening to Peter Windsor on the Cameron F1 yt channel. Peter said that Antonelli was very very good and Max like on slow and medium speed corners. But frightening spikey on fast corners. To the point where you just have stand back. And he's never seen a driver with that much contrast between corner types.

So Mercedes has to point him in the right direction a bit. They already made an error with him by putting him on soft tires on his first practice run at Monza. Let rookies start on mediums then give them the softs. Some high speed crashes could hurt his development. Nobody wants that

[TeamKoolGreen]

Well that was interesting. I assumed the team would have talked him back a bit. Instead , they did the opposite. They tell him "overtake available" even when he was pretty far back. And even after the pass , on the last lap Bonnington says "Use overtake on this stright, keep pushing".

[Hammerfist]

Antonelli passing albon there was very eye opening when you compare that to Hamilton not being able to pass albon for many laps. It seems Lewis was not using the full power or whatever his engineer was telling him to use because he never had such a good run to turn 9 as kimi did. Good job Kimi. Very impressive first race.

[Lasssept]

GPBlog

- Wolff expected more from Mercedes in Australia: "Not doing enough"

"[The W16], it's not doing enough at the moment. But, you can see at least it's become more predictable and we understand the car better,"

"We have the car's balance now, which the previous one didn't have. And from there on, it's pretty clear what we have to do to extract more performance. On a single lap, we look solid, and I think that the gap is much closer, and on the long runs or race performances too. We just need to understand that,"

https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/333112/w ... nough.html

- Wolff compares pace to McLaren: 'Something which we need to understand'

"P3 and P5, that's the result," Wolff told the media after the race. "If you look at the real pace today, pace result would be P4, P5. And I think it's a solid first weekend. But looking at it always from the glass half-empty side, you have to say that the pace of the McLaren is just very strong."

"Something which we need to understand, the way they are able to manage the tyres and extract performance from these is, yeah, we just need to get better. If we want to fight for on merit for race victories and for a championship, there is definitely something which we need to find."

According to Wolff, the McLaren drivers can get their tyres in the right window much faster and much better than the Mercedes drivers are able as his drivers' tyres suffer much more from overheating and therefore lose grip much faster. This makes it incredibly difficult for the team to fight at the same pace with the top of the field. In addition, Wolff shared how he also sees a big rival in Red Bull Racing.

https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/333148/w ... stand.html