Wolff: “We can’t say whether the shakedown went well. Until Max, McLaren and Ferrari are at 100%…”

Mercedes, Wolff dampens enthusiasm The shakedown in Barcelona left positive feelings in Mercedes, which was able to archive the first days on track without any hitches, with a work program carried out fluidly and 500 laps collected: no team has so much data available in view of the tests in Bahrain. The new single-seater immediately showed a good level of solidity, allowing the drivers to accumulate precious kilometers and the team to concentrate on data collection. The good impressions do not only concern the reliability, but also the responses of the car, at least according to George Russell and Kimi Antonelli. Team principal Toto Wolff, however, does not want to make the same mistake as in 2022, when forecasts and simulations gave the Brackley team a great advantage, a scenario then sensationally denied by a disappointing four-year period of ground effect. Wolff’s words For the Austrian, until there is Max Verstappen and Red Bull “at full capacity” it will be impossible to establish a hierarchy: “We still don’t have a precise picture of the performance because we haven’t seen Max drive the car quickly and we haven’t seen McLaren and Ferrari do what they know. So I would carefully avoid saying that the shakedown was fantastic for us. We simply don’t know how it went.” On the 2026 cars, finally leaving the factories to hit the track, Wolff added: “They are spectacular. They look like Formula 1 single-seaters again. They are neither too small nor too big, they are not like the ‘whales’ of the past. The aesthetics are very good, and in my opinion we will see many more overtakings, even in areas where we would never have expected them.”