Does Mercedes have three to four seconds in W17 left to unleash?
George Russell has been labelled a pre-season title favourite, but he expects a tough battle.
George Russell and Mercedes were allegedly denied the Barcelona test P1 time by Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari, in the closing stages of the fifth and final day.
But, that is of little significance, according to the information which seven-time grand prix winner Juan Pablo Montoya claims to have received. According to Montoya, Mercedes still has between “three and four seconds” of performance in the W17 which it can tap into, as the pace inevitably ramps up.
Montoya: Mercedes W17 can go up to four seconds faster
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F1 2026 unofficially got underway at the end of January. The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya played host to a five-day test, one in which teams could run on three of those five days.
It was closed to the media, but verified, unofficial sources credited Lewis Hamilton with the fastest time, a 1:16.348 apparently set late on the last day. That time was said to have bettered George Russell’s previous reported benchmark, clocked at the wheel of the Mercedes W17, by one tenth.
But, there would be no reason for alarm bells to ring at Mercedes, based on Montoya’s understanding.
“The times they were doing in Barcelona, from what I’ve heard, are between three and four seconds away from the car’s full potential,” Montoya told AS Colombia.
“To put that in perspective, when we’re talking about the car that’s far behind being two tenths of a second off the pace, when we go to Barcelona, you’ll see that the pole position will be around 1:12, and they’re doing 1:16.”
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Unofficial Barcelona times must be taken with pinch of salt
Piecing together a pecking order from testing times is a notoriously tricky business. Doing that from unofficial testing times, at the start of a new chassis and engine ruleset, is especially challenging.
Where Montoya’s information comes from, is unconfirmed, but it is a safe assumption to make that none of the teams showed the full capabilities of its car in Barcelona.
While a shakedown with remarkably few reliability concerns, it was the first track running in very different Formula 1 cars to the ones left behind.
Mercedes allegedly completed the most laps of any team with 500, and was widely reported to have been cranking up the pace as the test went on, and the W17 continued to lap “faultlessly” in Barcelona. But, the Silver Arrows almost certainly did not show its full hand.
Naturally, the cold temperatures of Barcelona meant that it was not representative track conditions, another variable which will have impacted the lap times.
The two Bahrain tests will offer more of a clue as to where each team stands. But, it will only be come qualifying in Australia when the true performance possessed by each team is confirmed.
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