© Jiri Krenek for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
In his analysis of the Barcelona Pre-Season Track Session, former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer said Mercedes’ testing programme seems to be different to other teams.
Mercedes topped the times at the three-day Barcelona pre-season test, but both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were running the softest C5 tyre.
While many observers agree that McLaren and Ferrari seem to be looking very good, Mercedes’ performance is still a bit of a mystery. Even Hamilton and Russell are saying that there’s still work to be done on the car.
However, in his analysis of the test on Formula1.com, Jolyon Palmer said he believes Mercedes is on a different testing programme than most other teams.
“They are the one team that have done practice starts fairly relentlessly from day two morning,” Palmer said.
“Every time I could hear a car going out of the pit lane, if it was doing burnouts and a practice start, that would be Mercedes.
“Because everyone else was just driving out and getting on with it. They’re obviously thinking bigger picture early on.
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“Lewis was the first driver at the end to do some sort of race simulation run. I think only Alex Albon really did anything similar in the Williams.”
While Palmer acknowledged that Mercedes’ fastest time was done on the softest tyre, he believes the team will ultimately again be among the top contenders for the title.
“They did run the C5 tyre to top the times at the end, the softest tyre, for what that’s worth.
“Maybe they had a load of fuel in it, it’s difficult to know. But they seem like they’re trying to prepare all bases at the moment.
“The car… I don’t think the drivers seemed super happy with it, but, hey, I thought they’d have a tougher year last year than they did. They could have won it, and I’m not going to rule them out.
“I think they’re going to be right there again,” the Briton concluded.
