The Formula 1 racing team Mercedes is prepared for the season that begins on March 8th. “We don’t consider ourselves the favorites,” said team boss Toto Wolff on Monday during a digital press conference shortly after the presentation of the new W17 racer, “but we are in the fight for victories.” The basis for this forecast is the experience of the former series world champion during the first test drives last week in Barcelona. Although the test laps were supposed to take place behind closed doors for various reasons, the result was clear: no team was able to get up and running with the new vehicle and drive concept as easily as Mercedes. Only at Ferrari is things going as well as at Mercedes. The drivers George Russell and Kimi Antonelli completed the most laps on the “Circuito de Catalunya” on the allotted training days, without any defects that were visible from the outside. During the so-called “shakedown”, the racing teams wanted to find out whether the new systems worked smoothly after the biggest rule change in the history of Formula 1, such as the hybrid drive, whose electric motor now delivers almost 50 percent of the power. Only the Ferrari seemed to run almost as smoothly as the Mercedes. Red Bull was slowed down due to a shortage of spare parts following an accident involving Isack Hadjar. World champion McLaren remained almost 1000 kilometers behind the mileage of the Mercedes. After a defect and a few laps on the first day, debutant Audi only got up to speed on the last outing. The British racing team Williams failed to complete its racing car on time. “We don’t think we’re the favorites,” says Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff.dpa “We’ve collected a lot of data,” said Wolff, “we looked good on the long run. But we didn’t see Max (Verstappen in the Red Bull) and McLaren.” All racing teams assured that the lap times did not play a role because the main thing that was tested was stability and, for example, the use of “boost mode”, which, according to Wolff, increases the speed by 30 kilometers per hour at the push of a button. But the Mercedes not only held out, the drivers circled faster than everyone else on two of the three days. During the first of two tests in Bahrain in mid-February, the cars will gradually be tuned for speed. More on the topic Wolff raved about the new, “aggressive” shape of the Mercedes. Last year’s model looks like a “whale” in comparison. The Austrian rejected the suspicion of competitors that he had not adhered to the spirit of the law when designing the V6 combustion engine. His team and Red Bull are said to have found a way to increase the prescribed compression ratio in the cylinder (16:1) while driving (18:1). Two or three tenths of a second per lap could be saved through more effective combustion. Wolff said that the regulations, their interpretation and their implementation had been adhered to, referring to critics whom he called “whiners”: “Maybe they are looking for excuses for their internal stakeholder management. If they want to entertain themselves with it, please do.” Mercedes powertrains are also used by McLaren, Williams and Alpine.
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