Has the Barcelona Shakedown confirmed that Mercedes is the big favourite? At Brackley they deny it

The game of roles has begun At the end of the Barcelona test the numbers gave Mercedes the record in terms of reliability, while in terms of absolute performance Lewis Hamilton was the fastest at the wheel of the Ferrari SF26. Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren were within two tenths of a second from Hamilton’s 16″348 to Lando Norris’s 1’16″594 with George Russell’s 1’16″445 set the day before in between. Max Verstappen with Red Bull was quite far away as he stopped the clock at 1’17″586, but the Red Bull Shakedown rather surprised the Mercedes men. Sky Sports UK journalist Craig Slater, in fact, reported the fact that a key figure in the Mercedes organization chart does not agree with the fact that rivals are painting Mercedes as the big favorite ahead of the start of the 2026 F1 World Championship: “The picture of the situation according to Mercedes sees the four top teams of 2025 very close to each other – Slater’s words – Mercedes denies being the favorite and is well impressed by Red Bull. According to McLaren, however, Mercedes is in front and not simply because they know the power unit inside and out having produced it, they think that Mercedes has created a very fast car all round and that it will be possible to match the performance of the W17 over the course of the season thanks to the developments, but at the moment, according to McLaren, Mercedes is ahead of the competition.”