Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas have put the first kilometres on Mercedes’ new W09 car at the world champion’s Silverstone shakedown. Bottas gave the challenger its debut in the morning before Hamilton got his first taste of a car he has been described as a “work of art”. However, it appeared that the W09 was hit by an early teething problem as it stuttered out of the Mercedes garage for Bottas’ first run, with a swarm of Silver Arrows mechanics then summoned to push the car back to base.
After a short recess, the W09 then returned to the track with both drivers experiencing the car around the British GP venue either side of the team’s formal launch at midday. Bottas said of his opening run in the W09: “The first few laps in these kinds of conditions and the wet tyres it’s difficult to draw any conclusions but what was positive is that everything was working well, nothing felt strange, everything was working as it should, the car wasn’t doing anything funny and it was responding to everything so it’s a start.” Under Formula 1’s Sporting Regulations, Mercedes are permitted to run up to 100km outside of official testing on designated filming days.
Speaking at Mercedes’ Silverstone launch event, team boss Toto Wolff said the team’s designers had attempted to keep the positive aspects of last year’s W08 while curing the negatives that led him to christen it a “diva”. “We’ve tried to preserve what we had in terms of speed in the car and find more driveability,” he said. “The concepts are very different (with other teams). You can look at solutions but we have in the last years tried to stay true to our design philosophy and continue to develop.”
The new Mercedes has a lot to live up to — its 2017 predecessor won 12 races last year and was on pole position for 15 of the 20 races. Ferrari and Red Bull are again expected to pose the biggest threat to Mercedes’ dominance of F1 but team boss Toto Wolff is also keeping an eye on the sport’s sleeping giants. “If you would have asked us the question this time last year we would have said Red Bull and it was Ferrari,” said Wolff. “It’s very dangerous before the season has started to reduce the number of potential competitors. “Ferrari is very strong, Red Bull is very strong. “I’m very curious how McLaren is going to perform with the Renault engine. And the step up the works team has made. Williams has gone very radical.” Pre-season testing begins at Barcelona on Monday.
