2019 Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team

[zibby43]

I think the Ferrari was the faster car last year at various points especially in race day trim. I'd rather be in the Mercedes camp .5s down going into Melbourne with Lewis behind the wheel and the boys and girls back at Brackley doing their thing. Seb is prone to implosions... Leclerc might just be the biggest threat to Merc this year.

Good points.

Merc sure didn’t look like they were .5s down today, however. Looks like they’re right there with Ferrari at the moment. With both teams clearly having more in hand.

[dans79]

Merc sure didn’t look like they were .5s down today, however. Looks like they’re right there with Ferrari at the moment. With both teams clearly having more in hand.

As a Merc fan I thought they looked a little behind today. Just to be 100% clear I mean they look behind because they've only had 1 day of pushing the car somewhat compared to Ferrari's 4. Not to mention, do to Merc's design philosophy it takes them longer to really get the car dialed in.

[zibby43]

Merc sure didn’t look like they were .5s down today, however. Looks like they’re right there with Ferrari at the moment. With both teams clearly having more in hand.

As a Merc fan I thought they looked a little behind today. Just to be 100% clear I mean they look behind because they've only had 1 day of pushing the car somewhat compared to Ferrari's 4. Not to mention, do to Merc's design philosophy it takes them longer to really get the car dialed in.

I think that’s a very fair assessment. I happen to agree, I just think the gap is under .5s after seeing today’s running. And when you’re under that threshold, a lot more variables come into play, so that if this were a race weekend instead of the end of the first week of testing, Merc would be right there with Ferrari.

I’m intrigued by how the Ferrari will treat its tires over longer stints when the warmer conditions roll around.

[nevill3]

edit wrong thread oops

[zibby43]

https://www.mercedesamgf1.com/en/merced ... barcelona/

Hamilton:

"It was quite cold in the morning which meant that it was a little bit difficult with the tyres for everyone. In general, the car was feeling better today and is coming together. However, we still have to keep on digging deep, analysing the data and the changes that we are making. The reliability has been really solid which is a great showing of all the hard work that everyone in the factory has done. But we have to keep on pushing, the competition looks very strong. The weather has been good all week so we could get through our programme and it was great to see the fans out there. I’m looking forward to coming back next week."

Bottas:

"The first week of testing was really good for us in terms of reliability, we got a lot of mileage in with the new car and didn’t experience any major issues. Today we did some shorter runs, seeing how the W10 works when you try to extract a little bit more performance out of it. We’ve been making progress throughout the entire week, the car felt better every single day. We’re now looking forward to next week when we will hopefully make even more progress. Many thanks to the entire team, it was a good first test. Now we’re all hungry to improve even more in the second test."

(Since Allison and Wolff went back to Brackley) Shovlin:

"Lewis had a tricky start to the day as the track was so cold it was difficult to get the used tyres to work. To avoid doing any damage, we waited around for a while for the surface to warm before getting into the programme. It’s the first time we’ve tried the softer tyres on the W10 and today was just a first look to understand the grip and balance differences between them. Valtteri’s programme in the afternoon was quite similar to Lewis, running through the same compounds. We’ve had a very productive few days and the car has run very reliably which has helped us get through the programme. It’s clear from this week that we’re going to have strong competition this year with Ferrari and Red Bull but hopefully we’ll have another good test next week which will help us with our final preparations for Melbourne."

[NathanOlder]

Personally I'd say those comments are not from a team in a bad position and need a whole philosophy change.

[Big Tea]

Personally I'd say those comments are not from a team in a bad position and need a whole philosophy change.

Mind, "We’ve been making progress throughout the entire week, the car felt better every single day. We’re now looking forward to next week when we will hopefully make even more progress." could well mean they had a rude awakening on day one. Perhaps they were not as far along as they thought an things needed tweaking

[wesley123]

Personally I'd say those comments are not from a team in a bad position and need a whole philosophy change.

Mind, "We’ve been making progress throughout the entire week, the car felt better every single day. We’re now looking forward to next week when we will hopefully make even more progress." could well mean they had a rude awakening on day one. Perhaps they were not as far along as they thought an things needed tweaking

How does that mean anything? It's the same for every team. No one has the full 100% on the first test

[Big Tea]

Personally I'd say those comments are not from a team in a bad position and need a whole philosophy change.

Mind, "We’ve been making progress throughout the entire week, the car felt better every single day. We’re now looking forward to next week when we will hopefully make even more progress." could well mean they had a rude awakening on day one. Perhaps they were not as far along as they thought an things needed tweaking

How does that mean anything? It's the same for every team. No one has the full 100% on the first test

Maybe they expected it right out of the box, as in past years? What matters is that they say "hopefully make even more progress" which sounds as if they are not where they hoped?

The important thing is that they seem to be moving forward

[zibby43]

Seems like a drivability issue that's preventing the unlocking of the car's full potential.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/merc ... e/4342487/

[dtro]

The good news is that reliability doesn't seem to be much of an issue for any of the teams (that could manage to run this week). Even if that has never really been an issue for the Mercs, at least in terms of engine reliability. Even Ricciardo's rear wing issue this week didn't match Hamilton smashing into the barriers on the first day of testing in Jerez 2014. After the first week of testing Merc has enough data to confirm which direction they need to go in terms of development paths.

[TAG]

Some general "marketing" stuff from Andy Cowell but still worth a watch.

[Mr.G]

I would like to suggest that Mercedes have been running in "concept validation spec" for the first test and will bring a freshly baked batch of carbon fibre muffins to attach to W10 during second test and promptly leap to the top of the field. Possibly not ahead of Ferrari but on a par with them.

I think this is more less the same for all the teams. At least RB mentioned they are planning massive update... I'm not sure about Ferrari, but they probably bring some kind of updates too.

[djones]

All the talk of wings and doom.

It will be quite funny if Merc turn up tomorrow with an Alfa style front wing and top the sheets.

I rather suspect they will turn up with minimal visual updates, set mediocre times all week and tell the news about how fast Ferrari and Red Bull are. Come the first race... boom, pole.

[mkay]

All the focus on front wings and the Mercedes being slow rhetoric coming from the media absolutely benefits the media. It's going to generate more clicks and views if the article and headline says Mercedes is slow and Ferrari is fast because a lot of people are tired of Mercedes winning everything, even if they are seemingly doing it was class.

Regarding the testing performance - I think the temperatures could have been playing a bigger role than we think. On the harder tyres the car put down some very quick times, in line with Ferrari and their long run pace was once again incredibly quick and consistent.

The long run pace of the Merc was not quick at all during testing last week. Last year both in Winter Testing and during the GP, Mercedes was lapping in the 1:19-1:21 range for 90% of the race (1:22s at the verystart of the race), whereas they lapped on average 1-1.5s/lap slower on their "race sims" last week.