Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes, Circuit de Catalunya, 2026

Mercedes remain modest about their new car’s potential despite their promising start to pre-season testing last week.

The W17 impressed many observers by running consistently and reliably as soon as it hit the track on the first day of testing. Even Mercedes admitted they covered more laps than they expected to.

However team principal Toto Wolff said their position in the overall pecking order remains a mystery.

“We’re very excited to see where the performance of the car lies,” he said during the team’s launch event on Monday. “I don’t think we have seen the true potential of anybody else.

“It’s always nice to know that it’s probably not a turd, the car, but something that will be fast and exciting to drive. Whether it’s good enough to win races or championships is on a different sheet of paper. We can’t wait for qualifying in Melbourne to start to have this first kind of benchmark.”

Mercedes completed 500 laps in three days, equivalent to more than seven-and-a-half grand prix distances at the Circuit de Catalunya.

“The highlight in the Barcelona shakedown [test] was the reliability of the power unit and the car,” said Wolff. “It was about clocking miles, about making sure that all the systems would function properly, the interaction of the power unit and chassis, fine-tuning some of the new toys that we have in boosting the engine. And that was pretty successful.

“Other than that, it’s really difficult to interpret times because we haven’t seen our competitors really on low-fuel runs. Neither have we seen them running really well over three days, obviously they had their problems. So we really don’t have a performance picture, contrary to what many people think.”

Wolff said the off-season had been unusually intense due to the early start to testing. “It’s relentless. We haven’t stopped.

“Obviously in the [chassis and engine] factories the work has been going on non-stop and the drivers were in the simulator a lot over the winter also, so it was the shortest break we’ve ever had. And between the shakedown, three days in Barcelona and then heading off to Bahrain literally next week and the week after, it just doesn’t stop.”

The team heads into the new season hoping to recover its championship-winning form of 2014 to 2021, since when it has only won seven grands prix. “We obviously had some more challenging times in the last few years,” Wolff acknowledged. “Respectable, but challenging.”

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