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Mercedes hits the ground running.


By De Jokke
February 1 2014

Mercedes stole a march on its rivals with their latest challenger: the W05. The car proves to be a rock solid concept that not only looks the best on the grid, but was the first car being able to complete a race distance. The car is reliable, that's a fact, but only at Jerez for the moment. The real heat still has to come: first Bahrain and later on races like for example Malaysia. But the works team is confident that the W05 can also tackle these obstacles. One question remains: how about the speed? How is the pace compared to fellow merc engine teams like McLaren, Williams and FI or against the Ferrari works team. This blurry picture will get clearer towards the end of the 2nd Bahrain test at the beginning of March. Nor Rosberg, nor Hami have pushed the W05 to its limits yet, but that can also be said of the other teams. Red Bull on the other hand has more worries going on, as they couldn't complete more than 20 decent laps due to Renault engine + bodywork cooling issues. So not really much data gathered to go through and no idea of the true pace of their challenger. A worse start can't be imagined for the WCC team. Let's see if Renault can come up with a solution...

Mercedes AMG Petronas concluded the opening pre-season test of the 2014 season at the Circuito de Jerez today, with first Nico Rosberg then Lewis Hamilton taking the wheel of the F1 W05 for the fourth and final day of running in Spain.

The team completed good mileage with both drivers, making use of both Intermediate and Dry tyres during the day to cope with the damp, changing track conditions.

Nico’s best time of 1:36.951 (on Intermediates) from 91 laps saw him end the day in eighth position on the time sheets, while Lewis’s best time of 1:30.822 (on Mediums) from 41 laps was good enough for fifth. In total, the F1 W05 completed 584.496 km of running over the course of the day.

  • Nico emerged for his first run on the stroke of 09:00, completing 91 laps of wet running before lunch.
  • With Nico having completed a race distance, Lewis drove in the afternoon to balance driver mileage for the week.
  • Lewis took to the track shortly before 15:00, adding 41 laps to the team’s total as the test reached its conclusion.
  • Mercedes-Benz Power Units today completed a total of 2,116.584 km between all teams.

Mercedes AMG Petronas completed a total of 1,368 km over the four-day test at the Circuito de Jerez.

The team now heads back to the UK to prepare for the second pre-season test, to be held in just over two weeks’ time at the Bahrain International Circuit.

Nico Rosberg: It’s come as a bit of a surprise that we were able to do so many laps here today, and throughout the whole week. I was able to do a full race simulation on only the fourth day of winter testing, so we can be very happy about that. We decided that I should stop driving at lunch time and hand over to Lewis as I had collected a lot more mileage than him at the time, which is a normal team decision. The past few days and weeks have been a great team effort; both factories in Brackley and Brixworth and also our fluid partner PETRONAS have been a great working group. It’s been a decent start, but there is still a lot of work ahead of us in the next six weeks because it’s such a big mission to get reliability with these new cars. Performance-wise we don’t know where we are because you can’t really compare to the other cars, but that’s not the focus right now. We’ve learned a lot this week so it’s an encouraging start to the year.

Lewis Hamilton: I was a little bit down on mileage this week, so it was good to get some more time in the car this afternoon as every little helps at this stage. It’s been a fantastic week for the team. We’ve put a lot of laps on the car which is a huge accomplishment. It’s a bit early to say this definitely, but right now the car feels pretty good. Like every year we’ve got a lot of work to do; it’s a new challenge this season and the workload is maybe a bit higher than in previous years, but it’s a new experience for everyone and I’m enjoying it. This week has just been about getting the mileage on the car and we’ve managed to do that quite successfully, which is really encouraging as reliability is the biggest positive we could hope to take away from here. So far so good; now we just have to continue working hard and see what happens in Bahrain.

Paddy Lowe: Today’s programme was designed around completing race simulation work. In damp conditions this morning, Nico conducted a baseline run before running a 74-lap race simulation on Intermediate tyres, including two pit-stops. This was completed faultlessly before we stopped for lunch. At that point, in view of the large discrepancy between our drivers’ mileage this week, we decided to put Lewis in the car for the afternoon. Conditions were very tricky on a damp track, spitting with rain and in cold temperatures. That meant we struggled to find grip on the Intermediate tyres and the Slicks. Nevertheless, he completed 41 laps to bring our total for the day to 132 laps. At the end, he successfully completed some race starts. Overall, it was a very solid day which brought a very successful week to a close. My thanks go to the entire team at Brackley, Brixworth and Petronas for bringing us to this point. It feels like we have hit the ground running, although we still have many aspects of both the car and the Power Unit to improve before the next track test in Bahrain. (Mercedes)

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Mercedes hits the ground running.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014:02:03:11:56:24 by De_JOKKE.

MESSAGES->author
De_JOKKE
03/02/2014 12:30
Mercedes plays down status as 2014 Formula 1 favourite after test:

[www.autosport.com]


Mercedes are ahead after the 2014 Jerez test, reckons Sauber's Adrian Sutil:
[www1.skysports.com]

http://images.planetf1.com/14/02/496x259/mercedes-crew-259_3090475.jpg
"Leave it to Lewis Hamilton to ruin Red Bull's day" - Martin Brundle

In memoriam: Sessions

MESSAGES->author
De_JOKKE
05/02/2014 08:58
Lauda: It looks as though we have the edge, but that could change very quickly

[www.gptoday.com]

+

Mercedes already has the edge believes Minardi


[www.gptoday.com]

http://images.planetf1.com/14/02/496x259/mercedes-crew-259_3090475.jpg
"Leave it to Lewis Hamilton to ruin Red Bull's day" - Martin Brundle

In memoriam: Sessions

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