Mercedes was rapidly confident enough to declare its porpoising and bouncing problems were resolved with its 2023 Formula 1 car, and by the end of day one of Bahrain testing it labelled the W14 a “much calmer, more stable platform” than its troubled predecessor.
But its assessment of its actual pace remained muted, or at least cautious, with the team saying it was assuming it still had work to do on that front.
George Russell and Lewis Hamilton completed 152 laps between them and were ninth and sixth quickest respectively in the overall times.
When team principal Toto Wolff was asked by The Race earlier on Thursday to compare Mercedes’ starts to 2022 and ’23 he said this year was immediately “very different” as 12 months earlier “the car was just bouncing around and we really weren’t able to drive it correctly”.
Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin confirmed those impressions in his end-of-day summary.
“The car has run faultlessly from start to finish and that has allowed us to complete an ambitious programme for day one,” he said.
“It always takes a few days to understand a new car, but we’ve got a reasonable handle on where we want to improve the balance.
“It was encouraging that it’s a much calmer, more stable platform to work with than the W13.”
The Race’s trackside verdict on new Mercedes
The Mercedes is perhaps the most eye-catching car in that it rotates extremely positively on entry. And dependably so, as although Hamilton occasionally had a wobble at exit through being aggressive on the throttle, that positive turn-in generally didn’t translate into a significant over-rotation and require a big correction.
It’s much more convincing than this time last year, with no obvious porpoising problem.
Read our full trackside verdict on the whole 2023 field, as judged from two of Sakhir’s most challenging corners.
Mercedes had spoken at its launch of aiming to be competitive “eventually”, amid suggestions it hadn’t hit all its winter targets and was likely to start the year off the pace.
Shovlin was reluctant to address the car’s actual speed beyond admitting there was room for improvement.
“The performance picture is always blurred after the first day so it’s impossible to say where we stand, but we’ve already identified several key areas where we can find some performance,” he said.
“We’ll work on the assumption that we’re playing catch up and need to pull out all the stops to find performance ahead of the first race here in one week’s time.”
The drivers’ comments as issued by the team were fairly neutral, with Hamilton saying “it’s difficult to know where we are in the order, but we’ll get a better feeling in the days to come” and Russell saying “there are plenty of positives to take away and we can focus on maximising the potential of the car in the coming days”.
