Russell: “Impressed by the Red Bull and Ferrari engines.” Antonelli: “Good package”

A good debut Mercedes chose to take to the track from the very first day of the Barcelona Shakedown, using the first of the three sessions granted this week. And the W17 definitely performed well in terms of reliability, given that it covered a total of 151 laps, 56 for Andrea Kimi Antonelli in the morning and 95 for George Russell in the afternoon.
The lap times, not made official by F1 but leaked, saw Russell finish the day in 1’18.696 – half a second behind leader Hadjar in the Red Bull and Antonelli in 1’20.700 – in fourth place. Drivers’ comments Andrea Kimi Antonelli explained: “Productive first day in Barcelona. There is a lot to learn with these new cars, so it is important to accumulate kilometers and acquire knowledge. The Brackley and Brixworth teams have done a great job to get us this far, developing and building a car capable of completing over 150 laps on its first real day of testing. However, it is still early days and over the next few days we will discover aspects to improve. For now the package looks good and we will try to progress further over the next two days of evidence.” George Russell has already kept an eye on some rivals: “These cars are quite different for us drivers, but once you get used to them then they’re intuitive to drive. We’re happy with our day, but I was also impressed with other teams. The Red Bull engine completed a lot of laps and they clearly did a great job, especially considering it’s their first engine they’ve made. And Haas also completed a similar number of laps to us and that means the Ferrari engine has also clocked up a lot of kilometres. It’s not quite like the 2014!”.