Brundle’s Mercedes W17 warning despite ‘relentless’ Barcelona pace

On the evidence of Barcelona, Mercedes has “aced” the new set of regulations for F1 2026, suggests Martin Brundle.

However, the former F1 driver turned pundit warns that one must “stay calm”, as factors like how the Mercedes W17 will perform on more typical track temperatures, and manage its tyres, are yet to be clarified.

Martin Brundle urges ‘stay calm’ over Mercedes W17

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There is a great deal of intrigue surrounding Mercedes heading into F1 2026, and that attention on the Silver Arrows only further spiked at the Barcelona closed-doors shakedown.

With teams permitted to run across three of the five days, the unofficial lap counter had Mercedes clocking a remarkable 502.

Furthermore, George Russell held what was the fastest time of the test – a 1:16.4 – all the way until the closing moments of Day 5, when Lewis Hamilton came in with a reported 1:16.3.

Russell’s time was only seven-tenths short of Oscar Piastri’s new race lap record set during the 2025 Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, in normal temperatures.

Brundle gave his thoughts to Sky F1 after an impressive start to the F1 2026 pre-season for Mercedes.

“Obviously, it’s a completely different concept of aerodynamics,” he said.

“So Mercedes never really aced the ground effect car, did they? They never got it right. Porpoising, and then they had a car, they didn’t understand it performing sometimes and not others, and they didn’t know why.

“So clearly, they look like they’ve sort of aced this completely different set of regulations. But, we need to see what it’s like on normal track temperatures.

Also, Brundle continued, “it’s going to be about regeneration and filling their battery back-up.

“But of course, they’ll regen every bit as well as any other Mercedes-powered car, probably Ferrari-powered car too.

“But it does seem as if they’ve just hit the sweet spot pretty early doors on a number of things, as I was talking about earlier on.”

But, as Brundle also alluded to earlier in his analysis, he is cautious about drawing too many conclusions on Mercedes just yet.

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“Their concept looks good, but it’s too early to say that,” Brundle warns.

“And you might have a car that just fires its tyres up brilliantly on a cold day and then overheats them on a hot day, which we’ve seen Mercedes have that problem before.

“So I do think we need to stay calm on it.

“But, you can’t ignore the relentless pace and reliability that they’ve had, so clearly, they’ve got a really good, cohesive package.”

Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin confirmed that the Barcelona shakedown was “really impressive from a reliability point of view” for the team, while continued “progress” was made, with which Mercedes went “quicker day by day”.

Mercedes will look to confirm that the W17 can continue to run well at a more typical temperature come the first official pre-season test in Bahrain, to take place from 11-13 February.

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