Helios wrote:I'm still not convinced regarding all that Mercedes yay, Red Bull nay - talking. Could it be that Mercedes were mostly focused on reliability instead of performance and RB went the other way round? If that was the case, Mercedes need to hope for RB to retire like every 2nd race of the season, which I doubt is going to happen. Sure, you can work on your setup early on with a reliable car and squeeze out some tenths of a second, but that wouldn't really help much if their concept is clearly behind RB's concept performance-wise. And then there's McLaren aswell ... even though the laptimes in Jerez don't mean a lot, it still seems like they've got some serious pace aswell.
I don't think you need to look much past the fact Nico said they have no idea on their own performance as they haven't been even close to pushing the car yet. Plus the fact Mclaren are still looking for a title sponsor, so putting their car at the top of the time sheets was always going to look good. Also the fact the Kevin put his car off the track twice yesterday, suggests they were pushing a little harder than most of the others. This test was ALL about reliability. And Renault failed bit time. Mercedes on the other hand passed with flying colours. Only the Force India seemed to have a few gremlins. The W05 obviously had a mishap on Tuesday, but a piece of body work coming off is in no way a big problem, as all the teams have worked with fixing body work for decades. Where as problems with a V6 Turbo Hybrid is a brand new concept to the teams and obviously challenging to the engine suppliers as well.