Mercedes has laid down the gauntlet for rival teams by completing a full shakedown program ahead of the first pre-season test next week.
George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli both got behind the wheel of Mercedes’s 2026 challenger at Silverstone on Thursday, shortly after the team published digital renders of its W17 car in its new silver and black livery.
Teams are allocated two sets of 200-kilometre filming and promotional days with their current cars, but this mileage is regularly co-opted for testing and, as in this case, giving a new car its first laps to validate reliability.
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Mercedes reported completing 67 laps of the 2.979-kilometre international configuration of the track — a total of 199.59 kilometres, all but exhausting its allocation — in a single session.
Audi, by way of comparison, managed only around 50 kilometres, according to reports, despite hitting the track earlier this month with an early specification of car it expected to run reliably.
Cadillac, which is using the Ferrari power unit, also left kilometres on the table when it ran at Silverstone last week.
Racing Bulls, equipped with Red Bull’s first in-house engine, undertook a filming day earlier this week in Imola, where the Italian edition of Motorsport reports it completed 162 kilometres. Icy weather played a role in restricting running, but rookie Arvid Lindblad also spun the car off the track later in the day, requiring it to be brought back to pit lane on the back of a truck.
Alpine completed a filming day at Silverstone on Wednesday with its new Mercedes power plant, though it’s unclear how many laps it set.
The preliminary data appears to validate long-running paddock speculation that Mercedes is ahead of the curve with this year’s new power unit regulations. Despite reliability having been expected to be a major issue for manufacturers in the early days of this rule set, Mercedes has demonstrated it can run apparently without problem straight out of the box.
“We have had a sensible first day of running with the W17 at Silverstone,” Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said. “As with any shakedown, the focus is on ensuring everything operates safely and reliably.
“We were able to get through our allotted mileage, with both George and Kimi getting to experience the 2026 car on track for the first time. That is testament to the hard work of everyone at Brackley and Brixworth.
“Our attention now turns to Barcelona where we will look to build on today’s running and add to our understanding of the W17.”
MERCEDES DEALS DOUBLE ENGINE BLOW
Mercedes’s high-mileage test was another blow to rival manufacturers on a day no agreement could be found on closing a loophole on engine compression ratios that has dominated pre-season discussion.
Both Mercedes and Red Bull Powertrains are understood to be working around the regulation mandating a compression ratio of 16:1.
Rivals believe both manufacturers have found a way to have cylinder volume expand beneficially while the engine is running hot on track but the contract again when cool. Regulations stipulate that the compression ratio is measured at ambient temperature.
Rival manufacturers are apparently unclear about the exact method by which this is being achieved and to what extent but lodged a complaint with the FIA late last year.
A meeting convened on Thursday sought to put the issue to bed, but reports suggest no conclusion on closing the loophole this season was reached.
The Race has reported that progress has been made on a method to measure the compression ratio while the engine is running, but the Italian edition of Motorsport says there is no agreement on its implementation.
Introducing a change to this year’s regulation would require a majority of teams — along with both the FIA and Formula 1 — to agree on a new rule under alterations to the sport’s governance structure in effect for the first time this year.
Mercedes and Red Bull supply six of 11 teams, enough to sink any vote.
A change to next year’s rules would require only four teams to agree, providing both the FIA and Formula 1 also approved.
However, in previous years the cut-off for changing the rules for the following season has been 30 April, after which the more stringent majority test would be required.
It means the issue is likely to continue rumbling through the opening months of the campaign, particularly if the worst fears of the aggrieved manufacturers are realised and the compression ratio trick is worth upwards of 0.3 seconds per lap.
CAN MERCEDES GET BACK TO ITS WINNING WAYS?
Mercedes announced another big win yesterday, this one off the track, with confirmation that it has pinched Microsoft as a major sponsor from rival Alpine.
Sky Sports reported the deal could be worth as much as US$60 million (A$87.6 million) per year, making it one of F1’s biggest team sponsorship agreements.
Money, however, hasn’t been Mercedes’s problem since its last constructors championship in 2021.
The team struggled to transition from its era of dominance in 2014–21 to the ground-effect regulations prevalent between 2022 at the end of last year.
It won just seven grands prix over the four years and was never a genuine title contender. Twice it finished second in the standings, in 2023 and 2025, but in those years it was obliterated by 451 points and 364 points respectively.
Mercedes started the ground-effect era on the wrong foot in 2022, having bet big on an aerodynamic concept that never worked.
Worse was that developments made at the end of that year delivered it a victory in Brazil that at the time looked like a breakthrough but ended up being a false dawn, with its 2023 season even less competitive that its predecessor. It was the team’s first winless season since 2011, its second year in Formula 1.
Uncertain and erratic performances defined Mercedes throughout the era. A spate of victories in the middle of 2024 gave way to a run of seven grands prix featuring only one podium.
Though last year the team was a more consistent podium threat, it couldn’t understand how Russell dominated the Singapore Grand Prix, a circuit at which the team had expected to struggle in line with historical form.
Mercedes pinned its problems down to correlation issues between the racetrack and its development tools. Getting reliable data from the wind tunnel about how the floor was working — critical in the ground-effect era — was a considerable limitation.
The German marque wasn’t alone in experiencing that problem — it eventually played a key role in Red Bull Racing’s downfall, for example — but it was never able to overcome it either.
The 2026 generation of car is much more like those of the era preceding the ground-effect rules, when Mercedes was a consistent frontrunner. With the floor deprioritised — and with the engine expected to be a key performance differentiator too — Mercedes is tipped to return to title contention.
It does so without a world champion driver in its line-up for the first time in its modern history after Lewis Hamilton walked out of the team to join Ferrari at the end of 2024.
The 2025 campaign, however, saw the rise of Russell in the role of team leader with an almost faultless campaign that delivered Mercedes’s only two victories.
Hamilton’s teenage replacement, Antonelli, also flourished late after some mid-year wobbles, teasing what the team believes is his immense promise based on his short but glittering junior career.
If the team upholds its end of the bargain and fulfils its potential, at least one of them will be contending for the title by the end of the season.
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