World champions impress at Barcelona but close three-way fight expected to be the best of the rest
Monday 16 March 2015 14:23, UK
Mercedes’ faltering rivals have hailed the world champions’ new car as “unbelievably quick” with the Silver Arrows’ domination of F1 set to continue at the start of the 2015 season.
Nico Rosberg’s lap of 1:22.792 set on Friday at Barcelona when the W06 ran with soft tyres for the first time this winter was in excess of half a second clear of the field’s previous best effort, recorded by Felipe Massa’s Williams on the first day of the final pre-season test at the Circuit de Catalunya.
“They are unbelievably quick,” acknowledged McLaren’s Jenson Button. “It is all a guessing game and the only thing you can look at are the long runs and the Mercedes is miles in front it seems on the long runs.”
Despite improvements from Ferrari and Williams between seasons, paddock insiders suspect Mercedes may be one second clear of the chasing pack when the new campaign begins on March 15 in Melbourne.
“I’d rather be a bit quicker, but it’s difficult to evaluate how quick we are because some people tried more of a qualifying trim and others did less so. I never drove the 2014 Ferrari, but I think this one it’s a massive step forward,” Sebastian Vettel told Sky Italia on Friday.
“It’s clear that if you want to win, you have to beat Mercedes. It’s exciting to see what’s going on behind them, which I think it’s not clear judging from the lap times we’ve seen so far."
Former behemoths Red Bull are thought to have been left lagging by an under-powered Renault engine while McLaren have endured a problematic winter following their reunion with Honda.
“They [Mercedes]'ve been running relatively conservatively throughout the testing, but have obviously just started to wind it up a bit and you can see the performance gap is pretty ominous," Red Bull boss Christian Horner told Sky Sports News HQ. "Everybody looks pretty tight behind them, but they seem to have quite a gap at the moment."
Lotus believe they may start the 2015 season as the fifth-fastest team – behind Mercedes, Williams, Ferrari and Red Bull - after switching to Mercedes power following McLaren’s defection.
“The first step of coming back from where we are is to try and aim for points, then when you are in the points to aim for top fives and then for podiums," said Romain Grosjean.
“I think it would be quite hard to be straight at the front end as the regulations haven’t changed that much from last year. Mercedes are quite far ahead, but then it seems to be quite tight behind.”
The McLaren has impressed trackside observers whenever it has run over the winter but the MP4-30’s chronic unreliability both in Jerez and Barcelona makes it unlikely it will finish the Melbourne curtain-raiser. “We are not going to have a race-winning car at the first race, but we might have one at the last race,” Button told reporters last week.
Red Bull have already indicated that Renault will delay the bulk of their engine upgrade ‘tokens’ until later in the year, while Ferrari plan to introduce a series of improvements to their SF15-T car throughout the opening races.
But ominously for the chasing pack, Mercedes themselves still have more pace up their sleeves. Despite his jaw-dropping lap time on Friday, an unhappy Rosberg said he was still yet to find his new car’s sweet spot.
